The Case for a National Health Program

[BadJuju]

http://www.pnhp.org/resources/pnhp-r...health-program

[lektrode]

Re: The Case for a National Health Program

this ones needs to be IN FULL VIEW.

the first thing that needs to be addressed - aside from lack of pricing comparison info and the F&I part of the FIREstorm yanking 400billion out of the kitty every year - is LACK OF COMPETITION IN THE MEDICAL SERVICES Marketplace

and IMHO - what we need is something along the lines of a 6th branch of the .mil services: the medical corps
which would function as The Provider of Last Resort, for those who have no other options - since obama/reid/pelosi's vers of 'healthcare reform' will quite likely result in even MORE people w/o access to medical services, short of the emerg room - as those of us who have - up til just recently - been able to afford it ARE NOW BEING PRICED OUT OF MED INSURANCE!

the medicorps.mil would offer those who would want training in the med field the option of getting educated in exchange for years of service, without having to go deeply into debt to get trained

and would give We, The People options beyond going bankrupt in the face of catastrophic medical bills, for a hospital stay....

all i know is that the political aristocracy is directly reponsible for this situation, has essentially 'immunized' themselves from its effects, while having sold their offices to the industry for campaign contributions and only they can fix it - but i'm not holding my breath....

http://www.pnhp.org/resources/pnhp-r...health-program

Over the past two decades, PNHP research has “framed” the debate and focused it on the need for fundamental health care reform. Some of these findings have become so well known that new members of PNHP (and most members of Congress) may not know that we are the source:
1. Administrative costs consume 31 percent of US health spending, most of it unnecessary.
(Woolhandler, et al “Costs of Health Administration in the U.S. and Canada,” NEJM 349(8) Sept. 21, 2003)
2. Medical bills contribute to half of all personal bankruptcies. Three-fourths of those bankrupted had health insurance at the time they got sick or injured.
1. “Illness and Injury as Contributors to Bankruptcy,” Himmelstein et al, Health Affairs Web Exclusive, February 2, 2005.
2. “Medical Bankruptcy in the United States, 2007: Results of a National Study,” Himmelstein, D.U., Thorne, D., Warren, E., Woolhandler, S. (2009), Am J Med, 122, 741-746.
3. “Medical Bankruptcy Fact Sheet,” Himmelstein, D.U., Thorne, D., Warren, E., Woolhandler, S. (2009).
4. “Medical Bankruptcy Q&A,” Himmelstein, D.U., Thorne, D., Warren, E., Woolhandler, S. (2009).
3. Taxes already pay for more than 60 percent of US health spending
Americans pay the highest health care taxes in the world. We pay for national health insurance, but don’t get it.
(Woolhandler, et al. “Paying for National Health Insurance — And Not Getting It,” Health Affairs 21(4); July / Aug. 2002)
4. Despite spending far less per capita for health care, Canadians are healthier and have better measures of access to health care than Americans.
(Lasser et al. “Access to Care, Health Status, and Health Disparities in the United States and Canada: Results of a Cross-National Population-Based Survey,” American Journal of Public Health; July 2006, Vol 96, No. 7)
5. Business pays less than 20 percent of our nation’s health bill. It is a misnomer that our health system is “privately financed” (60 percent is paid by taxes and the remaining 20 percent is out-of-pocket payments).
(Carrasquillo et al. “A Reappraisal of Private Employers’ Role in Providing Health Insurance,” NEJM 340:109-114; January 14, 1999)
6. For-profit, investor-owned hospitals (Cite 1, Cite2, Cite 3, & Cite 4), HMOs⁵ and nursing homes (Cite 6 & Cite 7) have higher costs and score lower on most measures of quality than their non-profit counterparts.
1. Himmelstein, D and Woolhandler, S "The high costs of for-profit care," Commentary, Can. Med. Assoc. J., June 8, 2004
2. Devereaux, PJ “Payments at For-Profit and Non-Profit Hospitals,” Can. Med. Assoc. J., Jun 2004; 170
3. Devereaux, PJ “Mortality Rates of For-Profit and Non-Profit Hospitals,” Can. Med. Assoc. J, May 2002; 166
4. Himmelstein, et al “Costs of Care and Admin. At For-Profit and Other Hospitals in the U.S.” NEJM 336, 1997
5. Himmelstein, et al “Quality of Care at Investor-Owned vs. Not-for-Profit HMOs” JAMA 282(2); July 14, 1999
6. Harrington et al “Quality of Care at Investor-Owned vs. Not-for-Profit HMOs” American Journal of Public Health; Vol 91, No. 9, September 2001
7. Comondore, et al “Quality of care in for-profit and not-for-profit nursing homes: systematic review and meta-analysis,” BMJ 2009;339:b2732-b2732
7. Immigrants¹ and emergency department visits² by the uninsured are not the cause of high and rising health care costs.
1. Mohanty et al. “Health Care Expenditures of Immigrants in the United States: A Nationally Representative Analysis,” American Journal of Public Health; Vol 95, No. 8, August 2005
2. Tyrance et al. “US Emergency Department Costs: No Emergency,” American Journal of Public Health; Vol 86, No. 11, November 1996
8. 45,000 annual deaths are associated with lack of health insurance¹. That figure is about two and a half times higher than an estimate from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 2002. The uninsured do not receive all the medical care they need — one-third of uninsured adults have chronic illness and don’t receive needed care². Those most in need of preventive services are least likely to receive them.
1. Wilper, et al “Health Insurance and Mortality in U.S. Adults,” American Journal of Public Health; Vol. 99, Issue 12, Dec 2009
2. Wilper, et al “A National Study of Chronic Disease Prevalence and Access to Care in Uninsured U.S. Adults” Ann Intern Med, Aug 2008; 149: 170 - 176.
9. The US could save enough on administrative costs¹ (more than $350 billion annually) with a single-payer system² to cover all of the uninsured.
1. Woolhandler, et al “Costs of Health Administration in the U.S. and Canada,” NEJM 349(8) Sept 21, 2003
2. “Proposal of the Physicians’ Working Group for Single-Payer National Health Insurance,” JAMA 290(6): Aug 30, 2003
10. Competition among investor-owned, for-profit entities has raised costs, reduced quality in the US
(Himelstein and Woolhandler; BMJ 2007;335:1126-1129 (1 December), doi:10.1136/bmj.39400.549502.94)
11. The Canadian single payer healthcare system produces better health outcomes (Cite 1, Cite 2) with substantially lower administrative costs (Cite 3, Cite 4) than the United States.
1. Guyatt GH, et al. “A systematic review of studies comparing health outcomes in Canada and the United States.” Open Medicine (2007); 1(1): E27-35.
2. Lasser KE, Himmelstein DU, Woolhandler S. “Access to Care, Health Status, and Health Disparities in the United States and Canada: Results of a Cross-National Population-Based Survey.” American Journal of Public Health (July 2006); 96(7): 1300-1307.
3. Himmelstein DU, Lewontin JP, Woolhandler S. “Who administers? Who cares? Medical administrative and clinical employment in the United States and Canada.” American Journal of Public Health. (1 Feb. 2006); 86(2):172-178.
4. Woolhandler S, Campbell T, Himmelstein DU. “Cost of Health Care Administration in the United States and Canada.” New England Journal of Medicine. (21 August 2003); 349(8).
12. Computerized medical records (Cite 1, Cite 2, Cite 3) and chronic disease management⁴ do not save money. The only way to slash administrative overhead⁵ and improve quality (Cite 6, Cite 7) is with a single payer system.
1. Woolhandler, et al. “Hope And Hype: Predicting The Impact Of Electronic Medical Records,” Health Affairs, September/October 2005; 24(5): 1121-1123.
2. Himmelstein, et al “Hospital computing and the costs and quality of care: a national study,” Am J Med, Vol 123, Issue 1, Pages 40-46, Jan 2010
3. McCormick, D, Bor, DH, Woolhandler, S, Himmelstein, DU, "Giving Office-Based Physicians Electronic Access To Patients’ Prior Imaging And Lab Results Did Not Deter Ordering Of Tests," Health Affairs, March 2012, 31(3): 488-496.
4. Geyman, J “Disease Management: Panacea, Another False Hope, or Something in Between?,” Ann Fam Med 2007;5:257-260. DOI: 10.1370/afm.649.
5. Woolhandler, et al “Costs of Health Administration in the U.S. and Canada,” NEJM 349(8) Sept. 21, 2003
6. Schiff, et al “A Better Quality Alternative” JAMA, 272(10); Sept. 12 1994
7. Schiff, et al “You Can’t Leap a Chasm in Two Jumps,” Public Health Reports 116, Sept / Oct 2001
13. Alternative proposals for “universal coverage” do not work. State health reforms over the past two decades have failed to reduce the number of uninsured¹.
1. Woolhandler, et al “State Health Reform Flatlines,” International Journal of Health Services, Volume 38, Number 3, Pages 585-592, 2008

[lektrode]

and why leaving it to the beltway mob will kill us yet

ObamaCare's 'Baby Elephant'

and whats worse than the beltway bozos muckin up the works?
their apologists/enablers in the states....

nears i can tell, the secondary 'benefit' of the lib/dems nightmare known as 'healthcare reform' - which is just another example of their transparency issues, with their use of PC sounding euphemisms for simple terminology like MEDICAL SERVICES -

is that the obama/reid/pelosi diktat will drive up the cost of med insurance to the point it will be even higher than the income TAX fer petes sake - which will then make most of us BEG THEM for 'single payer' - which will likely end up a better bet than trusting the FiREm brigade (and dont fergit the legal/drug mob, as they got their needles deep into our veins as well - again, we can thank the lib/dems for most of _that_ TOO!)

• February 20, 2013, 7:08 p.m. ET
• John Kasich says Valerie Jarrett promised, and other Medicaid tales.
  
  

• On Wednesday Florida Republican Rick Scott became the latest GOP Governor to volunteer to shoulder some responsibility for ObamaCare, which has liberal sages gloating about a resistance-is-futile shift in the GOP. The media don't want to discuss the substance, only the politics, so allow us to report how the flippers are justifying their flips.
  
  
  • Take the money or run. The Governors now expanding Medicaid are candid about their flight from their own fiscal principles: They want to take political credit for taking "free" money from Uncle Sugar and for appeasing the state hospitals lobbying for federal cash. The Health and Human Services Department will pay 100% of the cost of new beneficiaries, later 90%.
  
  
  Indiana Governor Mike Pence spoke for the 13 Governors so far who reject this seeming windfall when he called it "the classic gift of a baby elephant," with the feds promising to buy all the hay for only the first few years. So Governors like Mr. Scott and Ohio's John Kasich are trying to inoculate themselves on the right by creating triggers or "sunsets" that would automatically rescind their participation in new Medicaid if—make that when—Washington reneges on funding.
  They're only conning themselves. HHS can simply impose a blanket "maintenance of effort" rule that prohibits opting out—or any other change.
  
  
  • The cost-shift trick. Then again, why would states want to drop out, when they claim that expanding Medicaid will lower health-care costs for businesses and individuals? So-called uncompensated care "drives up the cost of everybody's health insurance," Mr. Kasich said at a recent press conference. "When they visit these emergency rooms and cannot pay, we pay for them."
  
  
  Hmmm. This is also the justification President Obama used to impose an individual mandate to buy coverage or else pay a penalty. Does Mr. Kasich now support that too?
  
  
  And do these Republicans really think that private costs will fall by expanding a government program? Unlikely, since the federal statistics put the total amount of uncompensated care due to the uninsured at $12.8 billion—or less than 0.5% of health-care spending. The Ohio Hospital Association estimates its members provide $3.2 billion in uncompensated care—but $1.3 billion is Medicaid losses, more than bad debt or charity care. Ohio price controls are so onerous that hospitals lose 17 cents for every dollar they spend treating Medicaid patients.
  
  
  • False flexibility. Mr. Kasich claims the feds are granting him the running room to reform Medicaid, on the basis of a late-night phone call from President Obama's consigliere. "I want to thank Valerie Jarrett today for being willing to work with us," he said. "Now I want to be clear to you: We don't know what the details of this are going to be yet. We don't know what the cost is going to be."
  When Mr. Kasich is done counting his magic beans, he might look north to Wisconsin for a better Medicaid role model. Last week Scott Walker released an innovative reform that rejects the HHS bribe and will also test the department's putative "flexibility."
  Under former Democratic Governor Jim Doyle, Wisconsin greatly expanded its BadgerCare Medicaid program, opening it to everyone earning up to two times the poverty line. Enrollment climbed 73% between 2003 and 2012, state spending increased 99% and proved so expensive that Mr. Doyle was forced to cap enrollment and put eligible people on a wait list.
  
  
  Mr. Walker wants to roll back Medicaid to the poverty line and use the savings to open up new BadgerCare slots so the truly poor can use the safety-net program intended for them. (Imagine that.) Wisconsin would forgo the 100% federal magic money, because ObamaCare mandates that states expand Medicaid to 138% of poverty and also in this case end the waiting list, which would grow the rolls by another 32%.
  
  
  The Walker plan would dump a lot of people onto ObamaCare's subsidized insurance "exchanges," though that would happen anyway. At least he would reduce one entitlement and insulate the Wisconsin budget from Washington uncertainty.
  • The counsel of despair. Some Republicans are folding apparently because trying to stop ObamaCare is too hard. Though he "never liked the Affordable Care Act," said Governor Brian Sandoval, "I am forced to accept it as today's reality and I have decided to expand Nevada's Medicaid coverage." Now there's a statement of vaulting political ambition.
  
  
  The reality is that ObamaCare remains deeply unpopular with the public and it will only get worse next year when individuals and small businesses are forced to buy coverage that is 20% or 30% more expensive than what they have. Some younger people will see premium shocks as high as 150% or 200%.
  
  
  HHS will manage the exchanges in 32 states starting in October but has released only 19 pages of regulatory guidance. ObamaCare is so convoluted, and HHS so incompetent, that the entitlement may explode on the launchpad. Why any Governor would climb on to this ship is a political mystery, but then they have their bad reasons.
  
  
  A version of this article appeared February 21, 2013, on page A14 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: ObamaCare's 'Baby Elephant'.
  
  

[Thailandnotes]

Re: and why leaving it to the beltway mob will kill us yet

1st of 11-page article...

When Sean Recchi, a 42-year-old from Lancaster, Ohio, was told last March that he had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, his wife Stephanie knew she had to get him to MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Stephanie’s father had been treated there 10 years earlier, and she and her family credited the doctors and nurses at MD Anderson with extending his life by at least eight years.

Because Stephanie and her husband had recently started their own small technology business, they were unable to buy comprehensive health insurance. For $469 a month, or about 20% of their income, they had been able to get only a policy that covered just $2,000 per day of any hospital costs. “We don’t take that kind of discount insurance,” said the woman at MD Anderson when Stephanie called to make an appointment for Sean.

Stephanie was then told by a billing clerk that the estimated cost of Sean’s visit — just to be examined for six days so a treatment plan could be devised — would be $48,900, due in advance. Stephanie got her mother to write her a check. “You do anything you can in a situation like that,” she says. The Recchis flew to Houston, leaving Stephanie’s mother to care for their two teenage children.

About a week later, Stephanie had to ask her mother for $35,000 more so Sean could begin the treatment the doctors had decided was urgent. His condition had worsened rapidly since he had arrived in Houston. He was “sweating and shaking with chills and pains,” Stephanie recalls. “He had a large mass in his chest that was … growing. He was panicked.”

Nonetheless, Sean was held for about 90 minutes in a reception area, she says, because the hospital could not confirm that the check had cleared. Sean was allowed to see the doctor only after he advanced MD Anderson $7,500 from his credit card. The hospital says there was nothing unusual about how Sean was kept waiting. According to MD Anderson communications manager Julie Penne, “Asking for advance payment for services is a common, if unfortunate, situation that confronts hospitals all over the United States.”

The total cost, in advance, for Sean to get his treatment plan and initial doses of chemotherapy was $83,900.

Why?

The first of the 344 lines printed out across eight pages of his hospital bill — filled with indecipherable numerical codes and acronyms — seemed innocuous. But it set the tone for all that followed. It read, “1 ACETAMINOPHE TABS 325 MG.” The charge was only $1.50, but it was for a generic version of a Tylenol pill. You can buy 100 of them on Amazon for $1.49 even without a hospital’s purchasing power.

Dozens of midpriced items were embedded with similarly aggressive markups, like $283.00 for a “CHEST, PA AND LAT 71020.” That’s a simple chest X-ray, for which MD Anderson is routinely paid $20.44 when it treats a patient on Medicare, the government health care program for the elderly.

Every time a nurse drew blood, a “ROUTINE VENIPUNCTURE” charge of $36.00 appeared, accompanied by charges of $23 to $78 for each of a dozen or more lab analyses performed on the blood sample. In all, the charges for blood and other lab tests done on Recchi amounted to more than $15,000. Had Recchi been old enough for Medicare, MD Anderson would have been paid a few hundred dollars for all those tests. By law, Medicare’s payments approximate a hospital’s cost of providing a service, including overhead, equipment and salaries.

On the second page of the bill, the markups got bolder. Recchi was charged $13,702 for “1 RITUXIMAB INJ 660 MG.” That’s an injection of 660 mg of a cancer wonder drug called Rituxan. The average price paid by all hospitals for this dose is about $4,000, but MD Anderson probably gets a volume discount that would make its cost $3,000 to $3,500. That means the nonprofit cancer center’s paid-in-advance markup on Recchi’s lifesaving shot would be about 400%.

When I asked MD Anderson to comment on the charges on Recchi’s bill, the cancer center released a written statement that said in part, “The issues related to health care finance are complex for patients, health care providers, payers and government entities alike … MD Anderson’s clinical billing and collection practices are similar to those of other major hospitals and academic medical centers.”

The hospital’s hard-nosed approach pays off. Although it is officially a nonprofit unit of the University of Texas, MD Anderson has revenue that exceeds the cost of the world-class care it provides by so much that its operating profit for the fiscal year 2010, the most recent annual report it filed with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, was $531 million. That’s a profit margin of 26% on revenue of $2.05 billion, an astounding result for such a service-intensive enterprise.1

The president of MD Anderson is paid like someone running a prosperous business. Ronald DePinho’s total compensation last year was $1,845,000. That does not count outside earnings derived from a much publicized waiver he received from the university that, according to the Houston Chronicle, allows him to maintain unspecified “financial ties with his three principal pharmaceutical companies.”

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/2...#ixzz2LZZ6eNwW

[aaron]

Re: and why leaving it to the beltway mob will kill us yet

is that the obama/reid/pelosi diktat will drive up the cost of med insurance to the point it will be even higher than the incomeTAX fer petes sake - which will then make most of us BEG THEM for 'single payer' - which will likely end up a better bet than trusting the FiREm brigade (and dont fergit the legal/drug mob, as they got their needles deep into our veins as well - again, we can thank the lib/dems for most of _that_ TOO!)

I think that is the plan. The only way to get a single payer plan in the United States is when the citizens demand it. The only way they will demand it is when the majority suffer , not just the poor minorities.

[LorenS]

Re: and why leaving it to the beltway mob will kill us yet

When Sean Recchi, a 42-year-old from Lancaster, Ohio, was told last March that he had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, his wife Stephanie knew she had to get him to MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

How did she know this was the only place he could get treated?
There was no where in Ohio that could have treated his cancer? There was no where they could have gotten similar care for a better price?

[aaron]

Re: and why leaving it to the beltway mob will kill us yet

How did she know this was the only place he could get treated?
There was no where in Ohio that could have treated his cancer? There was no where they could have gotten similar care for a better price?

When people are in life & death situations, their mind might be a bit distracted. Plus, I do not know that people have figured out that hospitals will try to f*ck them so bad.

[Thailandnotes]

Re: and why leaving it to the beltway mob will kill us yet

How did she know this was the only place he could get treated?
There was no where in Ohio that could have treated his cancer? There was no where they could have gotten similar care for a better price?

I think the article does a good job of explaining that they would have had no idea at any hospital what they were getting themselves into.

My wife was practically forced into an ambulance in LAX fifteen years ago after she fainted in the security line. I had no idea the four mile ride would be billed to my insurance at 10,000 dollars (My 10 % copay = 1,000) If we'd known, we would have taken a cab.

[LorenS]

Re: and why leaving it to the beltway mob will kill us yet

Stephanie was then told by a billing clerk that the estimated cost of Sean’s visit — just to be examined for six days so a treatment plan could be devised — would be $48,900, due in advance. Stephanie got her mother to write her a check. “You do anything you can in a situation like that,” she says. The Recchis flew to Houston, leaving Stephanie’s mother to care for their two teenage children.

It's not like this was a heart attack or burst aneurism. She picked this facility. They gave her up front cost estimates that seem pretty outrageous.

Stephanie’s father had been treated there 10 years earlier, and she and her family credited the doctors and nurses at MD Anderson with extending his life by at least eight years.

Did their experience 10 years previous carry similar exorbitant costs? Had something changes over the years?

[leegs]

Re: and why leaving it to the beltway mob will kill us yet

It's not like this was a heart attack or burst aneurism. She picked this facility. They gave her up front cost estimates that seem pretty outrageous.



Did their experience 10 years previous carry similar exorbitant costs? Had something changes over the years?

I have to say, I share your perspective on this. Of course the story illustrates the crime that is hospital billing, and it applies to simple ER cases as much as it does to high-end cancer treatment. And of course I'm sorry that the man has cancer. But I'm not terribly sympathetic to the choice to seek out top-of-the-line care if you don't have the money for it.

Thailand's story is more illustrative, and I have a similar one. My teenage daughter was involved in a car accident, where they hit a tree head on. She had on a seat belt, and initially was quite dazed, and suffered some bruising/abrasion from the seat belt, but was frankly alright. The ambulance left with her before we could get to the scene, with her strapped to a gurney, and from there on out, it seems that she was in their control. No consultation with us regarding how to proceed. The result was various scans, x-rays, etc. etc., resulting in about a $9k bill. I do realize that there was potential for various serious hidden injuries in a situation like this. But nearly $10k for this?

[BuckarooBanzai]

Re: and why leaving it to the beltway mob will kill us yet

I think that is the plan. The only way to get a single payer plan in the United States is when the citizens demand it. The only way they will demand it is when the majority suffer , not just the poor minorities.

It's called the Cloward-Piven strategy. Google it. I can assure you, it won't lead anywhere good. Single-payer healthcare is about state control of it's citizens' bodies. It's part of the larger plan of total control:

Goal: Control what they think
Tool: Public K-12 education, government-funded higher education

Goal: Control what goes into them (food)
Tool: Government support for Corporate agribusinesses like Monsanto, Government persecution of small local farms

Goal: Control what they feel
Tool: Promote the widespread use of psychotropic drugs, both illegal and legal.

Goal: Control their bodies
Tool: Escalate medical costs sky-high by socializing costs via both private insurance and public insurance (medicaid, medicare, SSDI); eventually achieve total control by using Cloward-Piven strategy to get sheeple to demand single-payer healthcare

Goal: Control their capacity to resist
Tool: Disarm them over a period of decades with "Common Sense Gun Control"

Once you have achieved total control, simply reduce them to abject slavery, and kill any that resist.

The only reason most people can't see it, is because it has been implemented almost completely.

Red: These walls are funny. First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them. That's institutionalized.
Heywood: Shit. I could never get like that.
Prisoner: Oh yeah? Say that when you been here as long as Brooks has.
Red: Goddamn right. They send you here for life, and that's exactly what they take. The part that counts, anyway.

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: and why leaving it to the beltway mob will kill us yet

It's called the Cloward-Piven strategy. Google it. ....

I did Google it.
Meh.
I'm not alarmed that a couple of loony professors 50 years ago cooked up a crackpot theory.
I certainly don't accept it as evidence of a sinister conspiracy to subjugate everyone in the world.
Strikes me as awfully thin soup.

I do see Occam's razor as a stong theory.
That indicate's that people all over the world prefer govt provided single payer health care, paid for by taxes, and people in the US are coming to that view as well. Plain and simple and harmless.

[lektrode]

Re: and why leaving it to the beltway mob will kill us yet

It's called the Cloward-Piven strategy. Google it.

The only reason most people can't see it, is because it has been implemented almost completely.

...

+1
wow.... that certainly explains a lot about whats occurred since 2008, (particularly/specifically since that fateful 1st tuesday in november08) thats fer damn sure!

is it any wonder why they've been trying to muzzle the blogosphere, painting anything coming from the only conservative-slanted... uhhh... biased network - as "not real news" ??? (even tho its _still_ the Number 1 rated, but guess thats only because people like o'reilly tell it like it _really_ is vs people like that koolaid-guzzler olbermann)

The strategy

Cloward and Piven’s article is focused on forcing the Democratic Party, which in 1966 controlled the presidency and both houses of the United States Congress, to take federal action to help the poor. They stated that full enrollment of those eligible for welfare “would produce bureaucratic disruption in welfare agencies and fiscal disruption in local and state governments” that would “deepen existing divisions among elements in the big-city Democratic coalition: the remaining white middle class, the working-class ethnic groups and the growing minority poor. To avoid a further weakening of that historic coalition, a national Democratic administration would be constrained to advance a federal solution to poverty that would override local welfare failures, local class and racial conflicts and local revenue dilemmas.”^[3] They wrote:

“

The ultimate objective of this strategy—to wipe out poverty by establishing a guaranteed annual income—will be questioned by some. Because the ideal of individual social and economic mobility has deep roots, even activists seem reluctant to call for national programs to eliminate poverty by the outright redistribution of income.[3]

”

Michael Reisch and Janice Andrews wrote that Cloward and Piven "proposed to create a crisis in the current welfare system – by exploiting the gap between welfare law and practice – that would ultimately bring about its collapse and replace it with a system of guaranteed annual income. They hoped to accomplish this end by informing the poor of their rights to welfare assistance, encouraging them to apply for benefits and, in effect, overloading an already overburdened bureaucracy."^[4]
Focus on Democrats

The authors pinned their hopes on creating disruption within the Democratic Party. "Conservative Republicans are always ready to declaim the evils of public welfare, and they would probably be the first to raise a hue and cry. But deeper and politically more telling conflicts would take place within the Democratic coalition," they wrote. "Whites – both working class ethnic groups and many in the middle class – would be aroused against the ghetto poor, while liberal groups, which until recently have been comforted by the notion that the poor are few... would probably support the movement. Group conflict, spelling political crisis for the local party apparatus, would thus become acute as welfare rolls mounted and the strains on local budgets became more severe.”^[5]
Reception and criticism

Howard Phillips, chairman of The Conservative Caucus, was quoted in 1982 as saying that the strategy could be effective because "Great Society programs had created a vast army of full-time liberal activists whose salaries are paid from the taxes of conservative working people."^[6]

[lektrode]

Re: and why leaving it to the beltway mob will kill us yet

....practically forced into an ambulance in LAX fifteen years ago after she fainted in the security line. I had no idea the four mile ride would be billed to my insurance at 10,000 dollars (My 10 % copay = 1,000) If we'd known, we would have taken a cab.

same thing happened to me - granted i was unconscious at the moment they were loading me into the meatwagon, but came to once inside and requested that i be taken to MY providers facility - upon which i was informed that because of my 'head injury' regulations dictated that i 'be taken to the nearest trauma center' - which of course wasnt my providers facility - even tho my providers facility, a VERY LARGE facility, with 100's of staffers of all sorts of specialties - even closer to where we were, at about 2pm - has a fully equipped emergency room, diagnostic imagery equipt etc etc - and so because i wasnt in much of a position to argue, simply told them: "but you WILL remember me requesting to be taken elsewhere, right? (like when it came time to fight about the bill, i would've subpoena'd all em to prove it)

and from the moment of impact, to my return to the scene - wasnt even 2hours?
the bill was over 15grand, incl 600 for less than a 2mile ride.

next time anything like that happens, assuming i'm not unconscious - they WILL take me where i want to go, or i will flatly inform them that they can either let me out right GD now! to take a cab, or we can discuss it in front of a judge, sometime the next decade.

the very idea that we can be essentially kidnapped like this is an outrage!

[lektrode]

Re: and why leaving it to the beltway mob will kill us yet

I did Google it.
Meh.
I'm not alarmed that a couple of loony professors 50 years ago cooked up a crackpot theory.
I certainly don't accept it as evidence of a sinister conspiracy to subjugate everyone in the world.
Strikes me as awfully thin soup.

tho something suggests to me that had it been a 'republican conspiracy', it might've been more like a stew or maybe even a bisque ?

;)

I do see Occam's razor as a stong theory.
That indicate's that people all over the world prefer govt provided single payer health care, paid for by taxes, and people in the US are coming to that view as well. Plain and simple and harmless.

well dunno about 'Plain and simple and harmless', but yeah, i'm coming to agree with this POV.
except that i think the entrenched special interests will do everything in their power to prevent it...
and our gutless political class wont even try to take them on - the recent events, when ONE party controlled all 3 branches of the .gov, with a 'veto proof' majority could've done anything they wanted to, but didnt have the 'nads to do anything without the other side's complicity - and resorted to ramming it thru the week before xmas, "so they could read it" ???

i'd be a lot more comfortable with the concept of a 'public option' being attempted first - like i've written here about on several occasions - whereby a 6th branch of the .mil services would run/staff clinics for those without any other options, that would offer 'free' med services to anyone who came in the door - these clinics would offer REAL COMPETITION to whats essentially a 'monopoly' thats been foisted upon us by not only the med insurance/legal/drug mob, but by the taxcode and corporate amerika.
and we dont even need to get into the parts of this that the liberals politix/policies (where the legal mob gets involved/gorges at the troff) have enabled (can you say tort reform?.. shur you can, but we dont wanna talk about that...)

the public clinics would be staffed by those who wanted to be in the medical field but otherwise couldnt afford med school, or didnt want to get into endless debt/bondage to pay for it and would then owe uncle sam, aka The Rest of US - an equal amount of time in service in exhange for their education and training.

that would be a REAL ALTERNATIVE to whats happening and i dare say far more 'equitable' and cost effective than to simply turn over the keys to the treasury to the above mentioned cabal that controls every aspect of the show currently - while failing miserably to care for millions of our citizens.

and thats the real conspiracy.