Health care reform version ??

The Senate Finance Committee rolled out their version their version of health care reform. The plan was released as a detailed 223 page summary (Only in government would we think of 223 pages as a “summary.”). This is the most moderate proposal to come from Congress thus far, intended to win Republican support. Early indication is that neither conservatives nor liberals are excited about the bill.

Here’s what caught my eye, found in the Times article:

The nonpartisan budget office also concluded that the bill would leave 25 million people uninsured in 2019; about one-third of them would be illegal immigrants. By contrast, a House version of the legislation would leave 17 million uninsured, the budget office has said. Currently, at least 46 million people are uninsured.

So after all this reform, the goal of which was to insure every American has coverage, we only reduce the uninsured by half to two-thirds.

Hmmmm.

So none of the versions are going to achieve their goal of insuring every one, the main reason we started down this road in the first place. And it’s going to take over 1,000 pages of legislation to not meet the goal.

Legislators. You gotta love them.

[Cross-posted at Fairly Conservative]

Filed under: Health care , Baucus plan, Health care, uninsured

Health Care

Why is it the more I deal with my employer’s heath care network administrators, the better single-payer coverage looks?

Filed under: Health care , Health care

I wondered what happened to that

Wiggy explains

Remember “Healthy Wisconsin?” Even Democrat Ruth Page Jones in the 97th Assembly district is not campaigning on it. In their latest newsletter, Wisconsin Club for Growth tries to explain what happened to Healthy Wisconsin.

You can find that here.

Filed under: Health care , Health care, Healthy Wisconsin

Is smoking bad?

First of all,

According to the World Health Organization 100 million people died worldwide from tobacco use in the past century and another 1 billion are expected to die this century.

There are an estimated 5.4 million smoking-related deaths a year worldwide, and that number is expected to continue to rise dramatically if no actions are taken, said Dr. Douglas Bettcher, director of WHO’s Tobacco Free Initiative.

The report said nearly two-thirds of the world’s smokers live in 10 countries, with China accounting for 30 percent of them, India 10 percent and the rest divided among Indonesia, Russia, the United States, Japan, Brazil, Bangladesh, Germany and Turkey.

OK, one billion less people than there would be, 40 percent in China and India. Can this be all bad? A billion less people have got to improve the environment.

Oh, then there’s this,

Dutch researchers have confirmed what fat smokers have waited years to hear – that healthy people are actually a greater burden on the state, because they live longer and oblige the taxpayer to deal with the cost of “lingering diseases of old age like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s”.

That’s according to the Netherlands’ National Institute for Public Health and Environment, which found that while “a person of normal weight costs on average £210,000 ($417,000) over their lifetime”, a smoker clocks up just £165,000 ($326,000) and the obese run up an average £187,000 ($371,000) bill.

As the headline says, “Healthy? You’re a burden on the state.”

Filed under: Environment, Health care , Environment, health, health costs, obesity, smoking

Fact checking Obama and Clinton ads

If you haven’t seen them yet here in Wisconsin, you most likely soon will. FactCheck.org takes a look at them.

# Obama is being misleading when he says his proposal would “cover everyone.” It would make coverage available to all, but experts we consulted estimate that 15 million to 26 million wouldn’t take it up unless required to do so.

# Clinton stretches things a bit, too. Even her plan – which, unlike Obama’s, includes a mandate for individuals to get insurance – would leave out a million people or perhaps more, depending on how severe the penalties would be for those who don’t comply. She won’t say how her mandate would be enforced, but has said that she was open to the possibility of garnishing wages.

# Experts also are skeptical of both candidates’ claims that their plans will reduce the cost of insurance for the typical family by $2,000 or more. ” I know zero credible evidence to support that conclusion,” says M.I.T’s Jonathan Gruber.

Filed under: 2008, Democrats, Elections, Health care, presidential , Barack Obama, Democratic Party, fact checking, Health care, Hillary Clinton, presidential election of 2008

Well, at least MPS is limiting benefits to domestic partners

Via The Week magazine (subscription required),

Palm Beach Community College in Florida has angered gay-rights groups by extending health benefits to cover employees’ pets but not their “domestic partners.” College employees can now get a discount on health insurance for their dog, cat, hedgehog, frog, guinea pig, or gecko. Yet a plan to extend health coverage to employees’ live-in partners was rejected in August. “Many pet owners consider their dogs and cats part of their families,” said Deirdre Newton of the Palm Beach Human Rights Council, “but there is a basic disconnect when an employer will insure an employee’s pet but not an employee’s partner.” [Emphasis mine]

OK, I may not agree with extending benefits to gay partners (or heterosexual ones either, for that matter), but is the PBCC board filled with PETA members?

Filed under: Education, Health care, Social issues , benefits, domestic partner, Milwaukee Public Schools, Palm Beach Community College

“If the government does it, it will save money”

Sound familiar?

State agencies will be paying off a questionable computer project for the next 20 years, according to a report by the state’s top computer official. That’s in spite of the fact the project was originally supposed to save the state millions of dollars over just a few years.

Yeah, that’s what some say about Healthy Wisconsin, et al.

(A tip of the conservative cap to Bruce at Badger Blogger)

Filed under: Government inefficiency, Health care , gavernment inefficiency, government waste, Health care, Healthy Wisconsin

The government can do it more efficiently

Are these the folks you want to entrust your health care (in fact, most areas of your life) to?

First from the weekend’s Journal Sentinel,

State’s casino oversight falls short, audit says

[Wisconsin's] Division of Gaming failed to notice discrepancies in daily casino revenue figures between the state’s computer monitoring system and tallies done by the casinos, the Legislative Audit Bureau report says. The auditors found discrepancies in the numbers for every day of 2006, the report says. The report does not say how far off the numbers were or break them out by tribe or casino. [Emphasis mine.]

Review finds 9 children in imminent danger

A sweeping state review of more than 600 active cases under investigation by the Bureau of Milwaukee Child Welfare uncovered nine in which a child was in immediate danger, and child welfare workers were dispatched immediately to deal with the situation.

The review came after the May suffocation death of a toddler, Alicia Burgess, who was left in her home by child welfare workers despite warnings by two doctors that the child and her brother were in danger. Raul Arteaga, 34, the boyfriend of Alicia’s mother, is charged with first-degree reckless homicide.

“That’s a 1.5% measurement of cases that did not succeed,” said Reggie Bicha, the administrator of the Division of Children and Family Services, of the nine cases. “Anytime you have that kind of intense review and scrutiny, to have a 1.5% error rate is arguably not that bad – unless we are talking about kids.” [Emphasis mine.]

Now that’s an understatement. Extrapolate that 1.5% to 5.5 million Wisconsinites, or 300 million Americans.

And from the federal government (much too easy to find, most of the time)

Watch list hobbled by data errors: Technical gremlins, clashing rules undermine shared screening center

Four years after the federal government launched the interagency Terrorist Screening Center (TSC) and assigned it the daunting task of harmonizing more than a dozen separate watch lists, balky technology and quirky business practices still combine to introduce gaps and errors in the critical database. [Again emphasis is mine]

And this is for terrorists. Again we’re talking about a small percentage, but it grows to a large number when you include Wisconsinites or all Americans.

Filed under: Government inefficiency, Health care , Government inefficiency, government oversight, government regulation, Health care

Health care or health care coverage

Lance Burri takes the time to explain it simply so we all can understand it.

The free market does not “fix” anything. It won’t “fix” health care, because as far as it’s concerned, there’s nothing to “fix.” People will either pay a certain price for health insurance, or they won’t. People will either provide the product of health insurance at a certain price, or they won’t.

“Healthy Wisconsin” will provide insurance coverage, but by artificially limiting both price and profit. Ergo, we’ll all do with less. And the kicker is: we won’t be paying less for it.

Can’t get much plainer than that.

Filed under: Economics, Health care

U.S. Says Company Bribed Officers for Work in Iraq

From the New York Times

An American-owned company paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to U.S. officers in efforts to win more than $11 million in contracts.

Do you think this could happen with health care?

Filed under: Economics, Government inefficiency, Health care