WED, in SF-->Rally for Meidicare Protection at Obama Fundraiser

SF April 20 – Rally for Medicare and Single Payer at Obama Fundraiser Medicare Yes! Insurance Companies No! To make a financial contribution, click here. See Placard Picture and Robert Reich article below Dear Healthcare Activist, Please join us on Wednesday, April 20 when President Obama visits San Francisco. Politicians in Washington have put Medicare on the chopping block. We want to send a strong message to Obama to protect Medicare and to remove the insurance companies from controlling health care. President Obama will be fund-raising at Masonic Auditorium (1111 California between Jones & Taylor) from 4 to 6pm. He will then fund-raise at 3230 Jackson (between Walnut and Presidio) from 6 to 7:30pm. We plan to be at both locations. Please let us know which location you can come to and if you can hold a banner or placard. Don Bechler will have banners and placards at Masonic Auditorium. His cell phone is 415-810-5826. Barbara Commins will be at Jackson and Presidio. Her cell phone is 415-341-3096. We encourage you to forward this message. We also encourage you to make a financial contribution to help defray the costs of our placards and banners. And we need help calling activists for this rally. We will send a suggested script and phone numbers. Please let us let us know how you can help. ___ Yes, I will be at Masonic Auditorium at 4pm. ___ Yes, I will be at Jackson and Presidio at 6pm. ___ Yes, I can help hold a banner or placard. ___ Yes, I can help call 15 activists. ___ Yes, I have forwarded this alert. ___ Yes, I would like to make a financial contribution to Single Payer Now. To make a contribution, click here. Or you can send a contribution to Single Payer Now PO Box 460622 San Francisco, CA 94146 Help us send a strong message on April 20. You are great. Thank you, Don Bechler Chair - Single Payer Now 415-695-7891 www.singlepayernow.net Medicare for All Is the Solution By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog - 13 April 2011 Mr. President: Why Medicare Isn't the Problem, It's the Solution hope when he tells America how he aims to tame future budget deficits the President doesn't accept conventional Washington wisdom that the biggest problem in the federal budget is Medicare (and its poor cousin Medicaid). Medicare isn't the problem. It's the solution. The real problem is the soaring costs of health care that lie beneath Medicare. They're costs all of us are bearing in the form of soaring premiums, co-payments, and deductibles. Americans spend more on health care per person than any other advanced nation and get less for our money. Yearly public and private healthcare spending is $7,538 per person. That's almost two and a half times the average of other advanced nations. Yet the typical American lives 77.9 years - less than the average 79.4 years in other advanced nations. And we have the highest rate of infant mortality of all advanced nations. Medical costs are soaring because our health-care system is totally screwed up. Doctors and hospitals have every incentive to spend on unnecessary tests, drugs, and procedures. You have lower back pain? Almost 95% of such cases are best relieved through physical therapy. But doctors and hospitals routinely do expensive MRI's, and then refer patients to orthopedic surgeons who often do even more costly surgery. Why? There's not much money in physical therapy. Your diabetes, asthma, or heart condition is acting up? If you go to the hospital, 20 percent of the time you're back there within a month. You wouldn't be nearly as likely to return if a nurse visited you at home to make sure you were taking your medications. This is common practice in other advanced countries. So why don't nurses do home visits to Americans with acute conditions? Hospitals aren't paid for it. America spends $30 billion a year fixing medical errors - the worst rate among advanced countries. Why? Among other reasons because we keep patient records on computers that can't share the data. Patient records are continuously re-written on pieces of paper, and then re-entered into different computers. That spells error. Meanwhile, administrative costs eat up 15 to 30 percent of all healthcare spending in the United States. That's twice the rate of most other advanced nations. Where does this money go? Mainly into collecting money: Doctors collect from hospitals and insurers, hospitals collect from insurers, insurers collect from companies or from policy holders. A major occupational category at most hospitals is "billing clerk." A third of nursing hours are devoted to documenting what's happened so insurers have proof. Trying to slow the rise in Medicare costs doesn't deal with any of this. It will just limit the amounts seniors can spend, which means less care. As a practical matter it means more political battles, as seniors - whose clout will grow as boomers are added to the ranks - demand the limits be increased. (If you thought the demagoguery over "death panels" was bad, you ain't seen nothin' yet.) Paul Ryan's plan - to give seniors vouchers they can cash in with private for-profit insurers — would be even worse. It would funnel money into the hands of for-profit insurers, whose administrative costs are far higher than Medicare. So what's the answer? For starters, allow anyone at any age to join Medicare. Medicare's administrative costs are in the range of 3 percent. That's well below the 5 to 10 percent costs borne by large companies that self-insure. It's even further below the administrative costs of companies in the small-group market (amounting to 25 to 27 percent of premiums). And it's way, way lower than the administrative costs of individual insurance (40 percent). It's even far below the 11 percent costs of private plans under Medicare Advantage, the current private-insurance option under Medicare. In addition, allow Medicare - and its poor cousin Medicaid - to use their huge bargaining leverage to negotiate lower rates with hospitals, doctors, and pharmaceutical companies. This would help move health care from a fee-for-the-most-costly-service system into one designed to get the highest-quality outcomes most cheaply. Estimates of how much would be saved by extending Medicare to cover the entire population range from $58 billion to $400 billion a year. More Americans would get quality health care, and the long-term budget crisis would be sharply reduced. Let me say it again: Medicare isn't the problem. It's the solution.

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