Fwd: re SF Calif Event - July 20,21 - Request for Help

Begin forwarded message:

Single Payer Now Mailing Party

Tues., Wed. July 20/21

We Need You

531 Grove St, San Francisco

plus Patient Protection and Affordable Health  
Care Act (PPACA) article by Claudia Chaufan.

 

Dear Single Payer Healthcare Supporter,

 

You are invited to a mailing party on Tuesday and Wednesday, July

20/21 from noon to 8pm at the home of Susan Cieutat.  She lives at 531 Grove St in San Francisco. 531 Grove is at the corner of Octavis – 21 Hayes Bus – 5 blocks west of  Civic Center BART and MUNI.

 

We will be sending out notices for our

July 31 San Francisco meeting featuring Claudia Chaufan speaking on Expanding Medicare and Stopping the Wall St attacks on Medicare.  See attached July 31 leaflet.

And our early August 1 meeting in Los Angeles featuring Sara Rogers, the health consultant to State Senator Mark Leno,

 

Please let us know if you can help with the mailing, if you have forwarded this alert, if you if you would like to make a financial contribution for the mailing, if you can post a leaflet in coffee shop, and if you can attend our July 31 meeting

 

___ I can help get out the mail on Tues., July 20.  I plan to arrive about ___ pm

___ I can help get out the mail on Wed., July 21.  I plan to arrive about ___ pm

___ I have forwarded this alert.

___ I plan on attending the July 31 San Francisco meeting at 255 9^th St.

___ I would like to make a financial contribution for the mailing. 

You can click here.

Or send a contribution to Single Payer Now; PO Box 460622; SF, CA 94146

 

Mailings are fun.  We have snacks, great orange juice, and the best people in the world to work with. 

I hope to see you.

 

Don Bechler

Chair – Single Payer Now

415-695-7891

www.singlepayernow.net

 

Patient Protection and Affordable Health  
Care Act (PPACA) article by Claudia Chaufan.

ttp://pnhp.org/blog/2010/07/02/a-second-opinion-on-u-s-health-care-reform/

A second opinion on U.S. health care reform
Friday, Jul 2, 2010
By Claudia Chaufan MD

In a recent issue in the New England Journal of Medicine, economist  
Jonathan Gruber praises the Patient Protection and Affordable Health  
Care Act (PPACA) as a "step in the right direction," even as he  
expresses a healthy skepticism about PPACA's capacity to control  
escalating health care costs, which he recognizes as "key to the long- 
term viability of our health care system." Gruber also argues that  
there is "shortage of evidence" regarding which approach will meet  
Americans' health care needs while controlling costs; therefore there  
is "no consensus" on what works [1].

Had Gruber looked beyond the U.S. borders, however, he would have  
found plenty of evidence. For instance, he would have found that U.S.  
consumption of health care as measured by critical indicators — per  
capita annual doctor visits, length of stay following heart attacks,  
or length of stay following normal childbirth – is no greater than the  
OECD average, and therefore cannot justify the extraordinary level of  
U.S. spending [2].

He would also have found that U.S. prices for medical care commodities  
and services are significantly higher than in other nations and  
constitute a key determinant of U.S. overall spending [3], and that  
such prices are determined by the exceptionally high administrative  
overhead caused by the system's fragmented, public-private financing  
[4] and by the comparatively limited market power of American patients  
vis-à-vis their counterparts in countries with national health systems  
where the government negotiates prices with drug and medical device  
companies [5]. And he might have concluded that PPACA will do  
predictably little to change all this.

Moreover, the international literature would have shown the author the  
extraordinary international consensus around nonprofit financing to  
cover medically necessary services [5].

But what about the dramatic expansion of coverage promised by PPACA?  
Is this not a step in the right direction? The problem is that  
insurance coverage, as desirable as it may be, is not health care, but  
just a means to that end. And the U.S. system is notorious for  
providing coverage without care. High co-pays and deductibles are  
significant obstacles to access. Nor does health insurance offer  
financial security: nearly 78 percent of personal bankruptcies in 2007  
that were linked to medical debt involved persons who were insured at  
the onset of their illness or injury [6]. PPACA, by allowing the sale  
of premiums for policies that will cover only 60 percent of health  
expenses [7], will do predictably little to change this state of  
affairs.

There is, however, an alternative proposal whose financial and policy  
soundness are based on decades of international experience and  
evidence. It would improve and expand Medicare to include all  
residents in the nation or in one state. That alternative may have to  
wait until PPACA unravels, as it predictably will [8].

President Obama argued that a model of reform as that implemented by  
PPACA would allow Americans to build on "what works" [9] – a decades- 
long experience with employer-sponsored for-profit health insurance.  
Maybe paradoxically, however, PPACA will unravel as employers realize  
that it is cheaper to pay a fine than pay for increasingly more  
expensive and inadequate policies, and employees enter the individual  
health exchanges implemented by the new law and find them so expensive  
that they "clamor for a nationalized health care system" [10].

References

1. Gruber, J., The Cost Implications of Health Care Reform. N Engl J  
Med: p. NEJM p1005117.

2. Peterson, C.L. and R. Burton, U.S. Health Care Spending: Comparison  
with Other OECD Countries. 2007. Order Code RL34175(September 17)

http://assets.opencrs.com/rpts/RL34175_20070917.pdf (Accessed November  
10 2007).

3. Anderson, G.F., et al., It's The Prices, Stupid: Why The United  
States Is So Different >From Other Countries. Health Affairs, 2003.  
22(3): p. 89-105.

4. Woolhandler, S., T. Campbell, and D.U. Himmelstein, Costs of Health  
Care Administration in the United States and in Canada. The New  
England Journal of Medicine, 2003. 349(August 21): p. 768-75.

5. White, J., Competing solutions: American health care proposals and  
international experience. 1995, Washington D. C: The Brookings  
Institution.

6. Himmelstein, D., U. , et al., Medical Bankruptcy in the United  
States, 2007: Results of a National Study. The American Journal of  
Medicine, 2009. 122(8): p. 741-746.

7. Dorgan, B., The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the  
Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act.

http://dpc.senate.gov/dpcdoc-sen_health_care_bill.cfm , 2010.  
Democratic Policy Committee.

8. Angell, M., Is the House Health Care Bill Better than Nothing?  
Physicians for a National Health Program, 2010:

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2009/november/is_the_house_health_.php (May  
17, 2010).

9. The New York Times, Obama's Health Care Speech to Congress. 2009: p.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/us/politics/10obama.text.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print 
  (Date accessed September 12, 2009).

10. Helderman, R., Gingrich in Va.: A Republican Congress could defund  
health care law. 2010: The Washington Post. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/virginiapolitics/2010/05/former_speaker_of_the_house.html 
.
Claudia Chaufan, M.D., Ph.D., is assistant professor at the Institute  
for Health and Aging at the University of California, San Francisco.  
She teaches sociology of health and medicine, sociology of power,  
public health, comparative health care systems and sociological  
theory. Dr. Chaufan is also vice president of Physicians for a  
National Health Program-California (http://pnhpcalifornia.org/).