The Cost of Doing Nothing

Sometimes I wonder if people really realize the price of not doing Health Care Reform. the cost in money, premiums, costs to hospitals, not to mention families and individuals who don't have insurance and are faced with bankruptcy.

Not to mention the human cost in lives. We lose on average the equivalent of 9-11 every month to the lack of health care.Yes, you read that right.. 2,500 people a month die from the lack of quality health care in this country.

Yesterday, in the New York Times there was a great article about The Cost of Doing Nothing. written by Reed Ableson.

Some of the more important parts that I want to share are:

Suppose Congress and President Obama fail to overhaul the system now, or just tinker around the edges, or start over, as the Republicans propose — despite the Democrats’ latest and possibly last big push that began last week at a marathon televised forum in Washington.

Then “my health care” stays the same, right?

Far from it, health policy analysts and economists of nearly every ideological persuasion agree. The unrelenting rise in medical costs is likely to wreak havoc within the system and beyond it, and pretty much everyone will be affected, directly or indirectly.

“People think if we do nothing, we will have what we have now,” said Karen Davis, the president of the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit health care research group in New York. “In fact, what we will have is a substantial deterioration in what we have.”

Emphasis is mine because I wanted to make sure everyone saw what was said. The consequences of doing nothing is things will just get worse. Much worse.

Nearly every mainstream analysis calls for medical costs to continue to climb over the next decade, outpacing the growth in the overall economy and certainly increasing faster than the average paycheck. Those higher costs will translate into higher premiums, which will mean fewer individuals and businesses will be able to afford insurance coverage. More of everyone’s dollar will go to health care, and government programs like Medicare and Medicaid will struggle to find the money to operate.

“It will break all of our banks if we do nothing,” said Peter V. Lee, who oversees national health policy for the Pacific Business Group on Health, which represents employers that offer coverage to workers. “It is a course that is literally bankrupting the federal government and businesses and individuals across the country.”

Even those families that enjoy generous insurance now are likely to see the cost of those benefits escalate. The typical price of family coverage now runs about $13,000 a year, but premiums are expected to nearly double, to $24,000, by 2020, according to the Commonwealth Fund. That equals nearly a quarter of the median family income today.

All of this is just exactly what the President has been saying for months and months and what Democrats have been saying for years. However Republican's have been saying NO, NO, and NO, and last Thursday during the Health Care Summit at Blair House, all they could say was "Kill The Bill" and "Start Over".

Starting over and killing the bill is not an option at this time. We have invested too much time and too much sweat and tears into this to kill it and start over.

I asked my mother one day, about this obsession the Rethugs seem to have with the number of pages in the bills.. and she said she didn't remember them or anyone ever being this focused on the number of pages as they have been. They did the same thing with the Recovery Act and now with the Health Care Bill, constantly reminding people how many pages it is.. printing them out and piling them up.. What they fail to tell people is they only print on one side, and usually it is only about half or three-quarters of the page the rest is addendum's and footnotes. But, back to the article
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“It’s also cramping our economic growth,” said Frank McArdle, a consultant with Hewitt Associates, which advises large employers and reported on the need for change for the Business Roundtable, an association of C.E.O.’s at major companies. Spending so much on health care is “really a waste of people’s money,” Mr. McArdle said.

The higher premiums will also persuade more businesses, especially smaller ones, to decide not to offer insurance. More people who buy coverage on their own or are asked to pay a large share of premiums will find the price too high. It doesn’t take too many 39-percent increases, like the recent one proposed in California that has garnered so much attention, to put insurance out of reach.

“We have an affordability problem that is moving up through the middle class now,” said Paul B. Ginsburg, the president of the Center for Studying Health System Change, a nonprofit Washington research group.

Once again, this backs up what the President and the Democrats have been saying for months and years. Why do people continue to deny this is true? Why can't people see this is happening?

While estimates vary, the number of people without insurance is expected to increase by more than a million a year, said Ron Pollack, the executive director of Families USA, a Washington consumer advocacy group that favors the Democrats’ approach. The Urban Institute, for example, predicts that the number of uninsured individuals will increase from about 49 million today to between 57 million and 66 million by 2019. The Democrats’ plan is expected to cover as many as 30 million individuals who now are uninsured.

That is just unacceptable. How can we allow this to happen? We can't.... we have to make sure this gets fixed.

There will be a cost in lives, too. Mr. Pollack’s organization estimates that as many as 275,000 people will die prematurely over the next 10 years because they do not have insurance. Even people with insurance will find their coverage providing much less protection from financial catastrophe than it does now. Individuals will pay significantly more in deductibles and co-payments, for example. “More and more families will experience huge debts and bankruptcies,” Mr. Pollack said

.

As I stated before.. 275,000 over 10 years... the numbers are sometimes a little different but that works out to 2,291 a month.... the equivalent of 9-11 every month dying because of a lack of health care. Think about that..

“If we fail this time, you’re not going to get this Congress to take this up on a big scale,” said Len Nichols, a health policy analyst at George Mason University who says he thinks the Democrats should go ahead and pass legislation.

But few policy analysts think Congress can afford to do absolutely nothing. Lawmakers are instead likely to try a series of smaller fixes, said Stuart Butler, a health policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a research group that favors market solutions over a larger government role.

After President Bill Clinton failed to get Congress to pass his health care bill in 1994, Republicans, who then had substantial victories in the House and Senate, worked with him to pass legislation like the health care privacy bill, a children’s health insurance program and the Balanced Budget Act, which contained significant changes to the Medicare program. Under President George W. Bush, the Republicans went on to pass a drug benefit under Medicare. “In the space of less than 10 years, you have several major bills,” Mr. Butler said.

Yet, still they didn't pay for anything and didn't cover anyone new. The Medicare D plan is good, but again, not paid for, and there is such a huge gap in coverage that we need new legislation to fix it. This is where part of the deficit comes from that everyone seems to be worried about. But of course that Rethug amnesia kicks in and they forget these facts.

If nothing passes now, Mr. Butler says he thinks Congress will tackle narrower areas, like insurance regulation, to make it easier for people with pre-existing medical conditions to find coverage, or maybe it will try another expansion of Medicaid or the children’s program.

But President Obama clearly prefers passage of a broader bill. In wrapping up Thursday’s session with lawmakers, he and other Democrats warned that an incremental approach was likely to provide too little relief to the people already feeling the effects of a broken system. “It turns out that baby steps don’t get you to the place that people need to go,” he said.

And even some people without a partisan point to make argue that the series of bills passed in the last 15 years have not made enough of a dent in slowing down medical costs. “We’ve had a lot of incremental reforms already,” said Mr. McArdle, the Hewitt consultant.

And many argue that putting off the inevitable has an additional cost. The Commonwealth Fund estimates that the nation would be spending hundreds of billions of dollars less than it does today if any of the health care legislation proposed by previous administrations had been enacted, assuming that they reduced costs by about 1.5 percentage points. If President Nixon’s plan had passed, the United States might be spending a trillion dollars a year less than it does now, and President Clinton’s plan would have reduced spending by some $500 billion a year.

“It makes a huge difference over a long period of time,” said Ms. Davis of the Commonwealth Fund.

This last section was the real money quote.. they have studied this and look what they have found... How much would the spending have been reduced if this had been done years ago when Teddy Rooseveldt tried it.. or Harry Truman?

We have to make sure this gets done. If you haven't called your Senator or your Representative, even if they are a Rethug, call them.. It is only a phone call and you will let them know how you feel. After what I heard Thursday, I think there are a lot of Rethugs getting phone calls now saying you don't really speak for me.. because I don't want you to kill this bill and I don't want you to start over.

Giving credit where it is due... Bob Cesca pointed me to this article.. He did a small write up on it at his place and I wanted to share it with all of you.

I hope you are as enlightened as I was and enjoyed the reading of it. I have posted most of it here, but you can read the entire article at the link above. Let's get this done folks.. Let's get the tweaks done by a simple majority and get this on the President's desk for his signature.

FBI Interrogator Says Torture Doesn't Work

In a NY Times OP-Ed today former F.B.I. supervisory special agent Ali Soufan, tells what happened when he did the interrogation of one of the people who were later water boarded by the CIA contractors.

Note, CONTRACTORS... yes.. that is one reason why there will be no one at the CIA punished. No one there actually did anything wrong. We can be proud of our people, they actually refused to do anything wrong, because they knew it was wrong. So, Bush, Cheney, and the rest had to go find some of the Blackwater jerks to do the actual torture for them.

In the Op-Ed Soufan says he had all the information by the first of June, long before the Bush Administration started the water boarding. You can read the entire Op-Ed by clicking here.

It is inaccurate, however, to say that Abu Zubaydah had been uncooperative. Along with another F.B.I. agent, and with several C.I.A. officers present, I questioned him from March to June 2002, before the harsh techniques were introduced later in August. Under traditional interrogation methods, he provided us with important actionable intelligence.

This is from the Op-Ed, no matter how you spin that, it looks pretty clear, they got what they needed from him BEFORE he was water boarded 83 times. Yeah, 83 times. You have to wonder too, if they didn't get the information they needed the first couple of times, why did they continue that many times. Did it just become fun for them??

We discovered, for example, that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Abu Zubaydah also told us about Jose Padilla, the so-called dirty bomber. This experience fit what I had found throughout my counterterrorism career: traditional interrogation techniques are successful in identifying operatives, uncovering plots and saving lives.

There was no actionable intelligence gained from using enhanced interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah that wasn’t, or couldn’t have been, gained from regular tactics. In addition, I saw that using these alternative methods on other terrorists backfired on more than a few occasions — all of which are still classified. The short sightedness behind the use of these techniques ignored the unreliability of the methods, the nature of the threat, the mentality and modus operandi of the terrorists, and due process.

Defenders of these techniques have claimed that they got Abu Zubaydah to give up information leading to the capture of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a top aide to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and Mr. Padilla. This is false. The information that led to Mr. Shibh’s capture came primarily from a different terrorist operative who was interviewed using traditional methods. As for Mr. Padilla, the dates just don’t add up: the harsh techniques were approved in the memo of August 2002, Mr. Padilla had been arrested that May.

Again, it is clear to see the Bush Administration lied about everything we were told, and no one questioned them on these things. Once again the media let us down.

I still think the best thing that can be done is for this information to get out, then it to be turned over to the UN and send all of them to the World Court at The Hague.

That will be the only way I think it would guarantee a fair trial. There is no way there will ever be a fair trial in the United States. Most Republicans seem to think what they did was right, and it seems there are a lot of Democrats who agree with it too.

There were certainly a majority of people who thought anything was fine in the days soon after 9-11-01, when everyone was afraid of another attack. Maybe that's why no one has pushed this until now. I say go for it and let the chips fall where they may. If there are Democratic heads that fall, then they will just have to fall too.

To me this is not a Democratic or Republican issue, this is an American issue. This goes to the core of our being. It is like the video I posted of Shepard Smith..
This is AmericaWe don't FUCKING TORTURE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Eugene Robinson Wins Pulitzer Prize

Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson captured the prize for commentary for his writing about the campaign that led to Barack Obama's election.

Robinson, a former city editor, foreign correspondent and assistant managing editor for the Style section, told the Post newsroom that he was particularly pleased to have won for his coverage of "the biggest political event of my lifetime, and one that has personal meaning for me." A number of his columns offered a black journalist's reflections on Obama's campaign.

The New York Times won five Pulitzer Prizes today, including one for revealing the prostitution scandal that forced Eliot Spitzer to resign as New York governor.

Scandal played a role in a number of awards, such as the local reporting prize that went to the Detroit Free Press for disclosing the steamy text messages that led to the resignation and jailing of the city's mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick.

Smaller newspapers fared better than in previous years, with the Las Vegas Sun winning the coveted public service award for reports on the death of construction workers, and the East Valley Tribune of Mesa, Ariz., sharing the local reporting prize for examining how one sheriff's focus on immigration enforcement endangered investigations of other crimes. The St. Petersburg Times won two awards, one for national reporting for fact-checking competing claims during the presidential campaign, and the other for feature writing by Lane DeGregory for her reports on the adoption of a neglected girl.

In addition, Mark Mahoney won the editorial writing prize for the Post-Star of Glen Falls, N.Y.

The awards, administered by Columbia University, serve as a reminder of exemplary journalism during a difficult period in which newspapers have been slashing staff and news space and some have shut down or been threatened with closure.

Bettina Boxall and Julie Cart, who won the explanatory reporting award for coverage of the growing menace of wildfires, work for the Los Angeles Times, which is part of the bankrupt Tribune Co. Steve Breen won the editorial cartooning prize for the San Diego Union-Tribune, which was recently sold to a private equity firm. And the Free Press won after cutting back home delivery to three days a week.

Among the other New York Times awards, David Barstow won for investigative reporting for scrutinizing how the Pentagon attempted to coopt retired military officers who became television commentators. The Times staff won for reporting on the U.S. challenge in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Holland Carter won for criticism, and Damon Winter for feature photography. The Times won the breaking news reporting prize for its Spitzer coverage.

Patrick Ferrell of the Miami Herald won the Pulitzer for breaking news photography.

Sen. McConnell's Wife is in TROUBLE.. Good Thing She is OUT OF A JOB!!

The wife of Sen. Mitch McConnell of KY is out of work.. but it's just as well, she is also in Trouble.. with a Capital T. The statistics are out and they aren't good.

The GAO has released information gathered during her tenure and things weren't as rosy as people wanted everyone to think it was. Wonder if No Lips McConnell will spin that one.

Here is the parts of the report that was in the NY Times today.

the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division, had mishandled 9 of the 10 cases brought by a team of undercover agents posing as aggrieved workers.

In one case, the division failed to investigate a complaint that under-age children in Modesto, Calif., were working during school hours at a meatpacking plant with dangerous machinery, the G.A.O., the nonpartisan auditing arm of Congress, found.

When an undercover agent posing as a dishwasher called four times to complain about not being paid overtime for 19 weeks, the division’s office in Miami failed to return his calls for four months, and when it did, the report said, an official told him it would take 8 to 10 months to begin investigating his case.

“This investigation clearly shows that Labor has left thousands of actual victims of wage theft who sought federal government assistance with nowhere to turn,” the report said. “Unfortunately, far too often the result is unscrupulous employers’ taking advantage of our country’s low-wage workers.”

The report pointed to a cavalier attitude by many Wage and Hour Division investigators, saying they often dropped cases when employers did not return calls and sometimes told complaining workers that they should file lawsuits, an often expensive and arduous process, especially for low-wage workers.

During the nine-month investigation, the report said, 5 of the 10 labor complaints that undercover agents filed were not recorded in the Wage and Hour Division’s database, and three were not investigated. In two cases, officials recorded that employers had paid back wages, even though they had not.

Doesn't sound good does it. Well that's just the beginning. It goes on from there.

The accountability office also investigated hundreds of cases that it said the Wage and Hour Division had mishandled. In one, the division waited 22 months to investigate a complaint from a group of restaurant workers. Ultimately, investigators found that the workers were owed $230,000 because managers had made them work off the clock and had misappropriated tips. When the restaurant agreed to pay back wages but not the tips, investigators simply closed the case.

In another case, the accountability office found that workers at a boarding school in Montana were not paid more than $200,000 in overtime. But when the employer offered to pay only $1,000 in back wages as the two-year statute of limitations approached, the division dropped the case.

Is it any wonder the Lilly Ledbetter case was ruled as it was by the SCOTUS? With the way it sounds that the Dept. of Labor has been handled under Elaine Chao, or should I say mishandled, it is a wonder anything has gotten done the last 8 years.

The report concluded that the Wage and Hour Division had mishandled more serious cases 19 percent of the time. In such cases, the accountability office said, the division did not begin an investigation for six months, did not complete an investigation for a year, did not assess back wages when violations were clearly identified and did not refer cases to litigation when warranted.

“When you have weak penalties and weak enforcement, that’s a deadly combination for workers,” said Representative George Miller, Democrat of California, who, as chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, asked the accountability office to do the report. “It’s clear that under the existing system, employers feel they can steal workers’ wages with impunity, and that has to change.”

Mr. Miller, whose committee is scheduled to hold a hearing on wage and hour enforcement on Wednesday, said he would push to enact tougher penalties for wage violations and laws that made it easier for workers to join class-action lawsuits.

The report said undercover agents recorded Wage and Hour Division officials urging workers who complained to file lawsuits. And on one recording, an investigator appeared to back off quickly on demanding back pay when an undercover agent posing as a wage-violating employer said he was financially stretched.

According to the report, the employer said, “Well, you know, like I said, all of our contracts have dried up, we really don’t have anything coming in, so. ... .”

The investigator responded,“O.K., so you’re not in a position where you can pay him?”

When the employer said no, the investigator seemingly gave up, saying he would let the worker “know that he has a private right of action to pursue the funds.”

The report expressed dismay with that approach. “Low-wage workers may be unable to afford attorney’s fees or may be unwilling to argue their own case in small-claims court,” it said, “leaving them with no other options to obtain their back wages.”

It sure sounds like workers were on their own, to either hire attorney's, pay their own fees, or suffer, because they had no one in the government agency to help them. Well, what else is new with the Republicans in charge?

More of that "less government" we always hear about??

Sec. of Treasury Tim Geithner Under Attack

Timothy Geithner is getting a bum rap.

When he was introduced in November last year everyone applauded and said it was a brilliant pick.

STOCKMARKETS soared on Friday November 21st when investors learned that Barack Obama would nominate Timothy Geithner as his Treasury Secretary.

That was from the Economist, and it goes on to say "Timothy Geithner is a seasoned crisis manager with a temperament to match that of Barack Obama". From the same article.

The 494-point (6.5%) jump in the Dow Jones Industrial Average is more a statement about investors’ anxiety over the unsettled state of economic policymaking. News of the Treasury nominee holds out the prospect of a more coherent and forceful approach to the crisis. The current treasury secretary, Hank Paulson, is reworking the $700 billion bail-out plan on the fly, policymakers are struggling over a new approach to foreclosures, the status of the mortgage agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is in limbo, and Congress has just sent the carmakers, teetering close to insolvency, home empty handed. The two months before Mr Obama is sworn in seem like an eternity.

So, as you can see, on Nov. 22, 2008 the Economist felt that Tim Geithner was a great choice.

Here's what ABC News had to say on their web site on Nov. 21, 2008 regarding the Geithner pick:

Pending Senate approval, Geithner will take over one of the most important cabinet positions as the country struggles through a financial crisis and what could be a lengthy recession.

Stocks soared late this afternoon when news reports first started to surface that Geithner's nomination will be made official Monday. The Dow Jones industrial average ended the day up 494.13 points, or 6.5 percent.

It was very good news after two dismal days on Wall Street. Obama's Treasury picks seems to have pleased many investors who are apparently happy with Geithner's familiarity with the markets.

If you examine the life story of Geithner you may think he and Obama are brothers, separated at birth.

So, once again you see a very favorable review.

It was the same with the International Herald Tribune, the world view of the NY Times.

Now, I am hearing from my TeeVee Machine a different story. This morning the Joke of the Morning, and we all know who he is... keeps repeating he wants to fire him. Also, it's too bad he is dead. Of course, I don't put a lot of credence in what Joke says, but a lot of people do, or so I guess.

I think we have to start talking about this and doing a counter plan. I really believe there is a plan to talk the markets and the economy down. Think about it for a minute.

Do you ever hear ANY republican or conservative say anything good about the economy or the stock market?? Do you ever hear them say it is going to get better??

But they all keep saying that Pres. Obama has to be positive and talk up the economy. It is his fault the market is down. It is Tim Geithner's fault the banks are not doing better. He made a terrible presentation of the bank plan.

Larry Kudlow wants him to resign. Who is Larry Kudlow?? One of the loud talkers on CNBC, where so many people go to get their stock market and financial advice. Oh, and now he has announced he will probably challenge Sen. Chris Dodd for his Senate seat. As a republican.

Kudlow is also one of the people who is pushing the Santelli rant. We all know who Santelli is.. the reporter/trader who stood in the middle of the floor in the Chicago Board of Trade and challenged Pres. Obama. Then went on G.Gordon Liddy's radio show and said Robert Gibbs "threatened" him. He was scared, he claimed and his kids were afraid to go to school. Right...

Jim Cramer is another one. He constantly complains and blames Geithner and Pres. Obama for everything. Even though the entire worlds economy is faltering. It is Pres. Obama and Geither's fault.

Not long after Sec. Geithner unveiled his Bank Rescue plan here, he left and went to Rome where he met with the other leaders in the G-7. There he revealed to them the plan and discussed what he had in mind for the banks and how to help our economy.

It was well received and went over very well. However our media has never really reported on it. From the Washington Post:

Going into the meeting, Canadian Finance Minister James M. Flaherty called the U.S. financial rescue "less than clear," echoing comments made by financial chiefs in France and Germany. Afterward, many of the officials appeared reassured, saying that Geithner provided clear answers to their questions.

Several officials said Geithner was particularly helpful in explaining how the various elements of the administration's initiatives tie together as well as how he plans to combine public funds with private resources to get more bang out of every rescue dollar the governments spends.

"What Tim Geithner wanted to do is set out the framework in which he's operating," Britain's Chancellor Alistair Darling said in an interview. "But he's made it very clear that he sees the urgency of this." Darling told a group of reporters: "It's quite clear that the new American administration is getting into its stride, it wants to make a real difference not just for Americans but for the wider world."

These articles are there, but sometimes you have to dig for them. Maybe it isn't that his plan was not detailed enough here as our so called financial experts have said, maybe it is that they didn't want it to be.

Maybe it is not what they wanted, because if it all works out like Pres. Obama and Tim Geithner and all the rest of his team have put it together and have planned, then the Democrats will have won again and it will be the end of Reaganomics and the end of the so called "conservative" tax cuts.

Bloomberg also wrote that his answers were clear and detailed and they were happy with everything they heard.

Geithner answered questions from G-7 officials “very clearly,” Finance Minister Christine Lagarde told reporters in Rome yesterday. “On paper it looks great,” said Lagarde. “The essential thing is now to implement it.”

More details on a public-private partnership to buy banks’ illiquid assets will be delivered in coming weeks, a U.S. official said in Rome on condition he not be named.

Geithner’s plan to tackle the U.S. credit crisis also includes additional injections of capital into financial institutions and as much as $1 trillion to promote new lending to consumers and businesses.

So, we have to do something to help the President and Sec. Geithner. I think they are under attack from the right wing nut jobs.

We have to stay positive, we have to talk it up. We have to keep our eyes on the ball and start looking and searching for these positive stories and not just reading these negative stories that are in the forefront.

I think Sec. Tim Geithner will be fine, if we give him a chance and if we can get these jerks from the right wing to leave him alone. Remember they have had free rein for 8 years. Their very existence is threatened, so they have to attack, and that is exactly what they are doing.