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Congratulations to all who have worked to demand that Single Payer Universal Healthcare be included in discussions on healthcare reform! Some cracks in the edifice of exclusion are beginning to show.
10:30 am – Examining the Single Payer Health Care Option
House Committee on Education and Labor
Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions Subcommittee Hearing
Witnesses:
- U.S. Rep. John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI)
- Marcia Angell, M.D, Senior Lecturer in Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts
- David Gratzer, Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute
- Geri Jenkins, R.N., Co-President
California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, San Diego, CA - Walter Tsou, M.D., M.P.H., National Board Advisor Physicians for a National Health Program, Philadelphia, PA
- Additional Witnesses TBA
Live coverage is scheduled by committee webstream and C-SPAN Radio (schedule, real player link, more links).
C-SPAN TV is scheduled to cover the hearing and broadcast it later in the day (watch schedule for time and station).
C-SPAN Video Library will archive the hearing for later viewing (link).
For some great background on Single Payer, see the fact sheet from PNHP (Physicians for a National Health Program): Single-Payer National Health Insurance. The short version is:
BILL MOYERS: But then let’s establish what single-payer is. Can you do that succinctly?
DR. DAVID HIMMELSTEIN: It’s what we used to call national health insurance. So government collects the money for health care from taxes, you don’t pay premiums, instead you pay taxes, and pays all the bills. Hospitals remain privately owned and operated. Doctors remain mostly in private practice. But their bills go to the government insurance program, just as they do today with Medicare, but we’d be able to streamline the payment system if we had only one payer instead of Medicare being one among many.
So a hospital would get paid like a fire department does today. You have one check a month that pays for the entire operation. And that means you can eliminate the huge billing apparatus of the hospitals and the doctors offices where we’re employing many people to do our billing. And fighting with insurance companies. You save $400 billion a year that way.
For an analysis of the three Single Payer bills now before Congress, see BargainCountertenor’s fabulous diary: Single Payer Bills in Congress: First Impressions.
HR 676 was first introduced in 2003 to the 108th Congress by Representative John Conyers and has been introduced to in every Congress since, getting more support each session.
From PNHP (Physicians for a National Health Program), as of last year:
HR-676 has been endorsed by over 417 union organizations in 48 states including 107 Central Labor Councils and Area Labor Federations and 33 state AFL-CIO’s (KY, PA, CT, OH, DE, ND, WA, SC, WY, VT, FL, WI, WV, SD, NC, MO,MN, ME, AR, MD-DC, TX, IA, AZ, TN, OR, GA, OK, KS, CO, IN, AL, CA & AK).
It has the vigourous support of the largest Nurse’s Union (CNA/NNOC), and the largest Nurses professional association (ANA). And the National Association of Social Workers.
It was endorsed last year by largest physician specialty group, the American College of Physicians which represents Internists, and in a recent editorial in their professional journal (.pdf).
And of course Physicians for a National Program (PNHP) with organized activists in most States.
It has been recently endorsed by the U..S. Conference of Mayors.
Oh yes… HR-676 has also been endorsed by the Assembly of the Urban Caucus of the Episcopal Church, General Board on Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Health, Education and Welfare Association of the Presbyterian Church (USA). And most recently Unitarian-Universalist.
More on today’s hearings, what it means and a call to action from National Nurses Movement at Daily Kos: Congressional Hearing to Consider Single-Payer Healthcare:
The official silence on Capitol Hill on single payer — at least in the House — is ending.
Thanks to the ongoing pressure and dedication of single payer activists across the country, who the Washington Post noted this past weekend, "have spent months hounding Democratic lawmakers and organizing demonstrations, including one that resulted in 13 arrests at a Senate hearing last month," a Congressional committee will for the first time in the current proceedings on healthcare reform, hold a public hearing on single payer Wednesday.
… a key priority of the insurance industry throughout this process has been shutting out discussion of single-payer reforms, and their own uselessness…so in that regards this is a real victory for healthcare reform
144 Comments
Thanks Selise
Thank you selise, this is wonderful
Mandated Healthcare is the new American Life Tax? Remember the Whiskey Rebellion?? A nation of submissives subservient to corporate controlled insurance/service industries which have failed to control escalating costs for decades while using the power of corporations to protect entrenched cash cows?
It is unfortunate our economy is totally dependant on a foundation of quicksand!! The escalating price of energy dictating and effecting the price and cost of everything! A regressive decimating energy tax now combined with a proposed life tax in the form of mandated health care with cost to be controlled by the fox in the hen house?
Life Liberty and pursuit of happiness in accordance with corporate dictates is an insidious form of corporate servitude distinguished from slavery only by degrees of severity!
Nice job Selise!
just starting
“U.s. paying more for health care than any other industrialized country”
Will they discuss single payer? Very clear that they are going for incremental steps. Knowing that that is where the Clintons tripped up. Billions of dollars spent by Insurance companies fighting their plan back in 93
thanks leen, elliot and jamesjoyce!
hearing coming to order. chair andrews introduces john conyers to applause and the chair says “you may applaud!”
woo hoo! the people will be heard!
andrews: i believe single payer should be on the table.
Thanks for all the linky goodness, selise!
kline (ranking R member):
refers to president obama saying that single payer wouldn’t be included in discussions of reform and commends the president for that stand.
advocates for bipartisanship.
Miller “no single payer” This man has clearly not raised children without health care. Miller has never even gone without health care like the 40-50 million without health care.
Are these folks going to spend their time saying “this is not the time” He is right a national health care plan should have been implemented 100 years ago.
back to chair andrews.
says pete stark is in the room
re schedule: refers to long history of single payer debate and says we are moving too slowly, not too fast
so glad you are here and very much appreciate your comments. please keep them coming!
conyers up.
says nice things about the witnesses to come on second panel
going forward, available to all members for discussion.
there’s some talk that single payer is off the table
if you take the most popular health care reform measure off the table heaven knows what reform you think you’re going to get.
praises obama for keeping in touch re single payer. citizens are keeping in touch
conyers:
has a poll (or polls?) to enter into the record to show that single payer is the most popular alternative with the american public
list endorsements from 100’s of unions and others.
Conyers gets it
conyers:
here’s how i’m going to help my president.
i’m telling him that he is getting some bad advice from people who think something like the massachusetts is going to help
health care NOT health insurance
Conyers “constitutional right to health care”
“37 page bill” not the 1994 mistake of 1200 pages
3 and a half percent of your income, privately administered, break the employer connection, combination of existing health care groups.
conyers:
about 3.5% of income = health care for all.
no one is going to be giving up their doctors or hospitals
break the employer connection
most popular plan with the people
eek Conyers is a bit hard to understand
Medicare for all
conyers “this is a great bill”
“nelson Mandela supposed to be in prison for the rest of his life and he ended up being President”
“Medicare could not be done” “Obama is our President, you can not elect a President of color”
It is all possible!
You go Conyers
“the American people are watching very closely”
Yes we are Congressman Conyers yes we are
conyers:
chairman, i’m hearing that this is a great bill but it’s not possible so we have to do the next best thing. so i ask what is that? well, we have a plan of a plan we’d like you review.
talks about the american revolution, south africa.
nelson mandela was supposed to be in jail.
social security was supposed to be impossible.
medicare was fought tooth and nail.
it’s not possible to elect a black man to be president
…. please consider the political necessity of bringing up this single payer bill. the american people are watching very closely. now is the time.
Yeah conyers, we are watching!
lots of applause from the audience for conyers as he finishes.
chair andrews is introducing witnesses.
howdy mui and sadly!
ey Selise
Great effing PANEL
geri jenkins (national nurses) is up.
medical care is rationed by ability to pay and by insurance companies and people die.
we need evidence based policy
this nurse ROCKS
Have spent the last year and a half in our senior health care system with my aging and ill WWII Teamster father. This man had been in the hospital twice in his 82 year old life when he needed the system that he had spent his life paying into. My parents private health insurance company Secure Horizons tried their very best to cut him off asap when he entered the system. so much so that I started referring to this company as UN-Secure Horizons. We fought we pushed, I called newspapers, their Rep, mentioned Un Secure Horizons on Washington Journal and the Diane Rehm show.
Our seniors are being royally fucked, run around like a bunch of aging rats. At a time in their lives that they should be relaxing into their golden years they are being run around in a private health care scene that is demoralizing and insane.
have talked with a slew of Doctors, nurses, health care aides, etc. They all know the system is unfair and insane. They know as this nurse knows.
single Payer is the most fair, and lives up to all have a constitutional right to health care. The multe billion dollar for profit insurance companies have our health care system in lock down
amen!
but she talks so fast, i can’t type and follow along…. will have to pull some bits from her written statement. so many killer points. brilliant!
yes!
jenkins:
the usa is last (highest number) out of 19 industrialized countries in preventable deaths due to lack of health care
Tsou: when congresscritters say single payer off the the table, they mean protect insurers.
she hits every point,and IS THEIR EVERYDAY in the trenches
tsou is up.
if you are for universal health care are the only solution is properly financed single payer health care.
if we are going to have universal health care somebody’s ox is going to be gored to pay for it: the american public, drs, nurses and other health care providers or private insurance companies.
when you say that single payer is off the table, you are saying that private insurance companies will be protected.
JOBS and health insurance LOSS=DEVASTATING
tsou:
single payer will transform how we deliver health care just as the internet has transformed how information is delivered.
ew, I’m not so sure about the national database. It scares me for some reason.
yea PHILLY
WE THE PEOPLE
I raised three daughters with no health care coverage.(Ex is an addict so no help) Made 25,ooo-30,ooo during the child rearing years, self employed part of the time (student rentals, coffee cafe) P.E. teacher for six years but like Christy wanted to spend valuable time with my kids so I worked three quarters time (30 hours a week). Could not afford the 5-6 hundred a month for catastrophic coverage so I rolled the dice. Never ever asked the state for a damn thing, never ever…. paid all taxes including exorbitant local taxes ( 2500 a year) could have been used for my childrens health insurance.
During 29 years of raising my children I spent not more than 6000.OO (no bullshit) dollars out of pocket on yearly check ups, school physicals, ear aches etc things we could not take care of at home. I thank the heavens we did not have anything catastrophic happen.
A large percentage of the 50 million people without health care are working.
Yes and the first thing the repug governor will try to budget out of the budget is mental health.
tsou:
obama says single payer is too revolutionary.
but i come from philidelphia and we are not afraid of revolution
we the people…. not the we the insurers. we the people….
subsidized child care for single moms is a good thing too. child care is at least 20K a year for some. Almost as much as some salaries.
gratzer up.
short break for me to get more coffee. be right back…..
Wow! Thirteen libertarian protesters just stood up, shouted that pure free-market privatized health insurance solutions be put on the table at this hearing, and were hauled off in handcuffs!
(OK, not.)
IS THIS A GOOPER..OY
Gratz: quebec, consumer driven healthcare. parents ended up delivering their own baby(?!?)
Temptation of single payer?!?
Okay waaait a minute, Sir.
Oh Dr. Angell, up. Phew!
a paid whore
which Insurance company is padding his pockets?
bingo
I am just alarmed by what our elderly are going through wrestling with Insurance companies. If they do not have family members to help them navigate that maze they are fucked.
I met one couple in their late 80’s who had just gotten divorced after 60 some years of marriage so that she could stay at home while he was getting coverage for the nursing home. I tell you it is a maze made in hell for our elderly. that’s covered that’s not, your coverered today your not covered tomorrow, you can stay for 90 days, go home, not have a fall for 60 days and then your covered again…screwball city.
Know a nun Sister Virgine who had sacrificed her whole life working in poor school districts she is now in the Maria Josephs Nursing Home (bunch of aging nuns in this facility, used to be a convent) facility in Trotwood Ohio and has been cut off from her rehabilitation sessions because of her insurance company. Fucked up just flat out fucked up.
So she has to fall again to get her rehabilitation coverage WTF is with this?
Met another man who was being sent home at 83 with one leg because his coverage would not cover the nursing home fee and he still owned too much. Not sure of the exact snafu…but he was clearly depressed by his circumstances
sounds like i took a coffee break at just the right moment! *g*
angell up.
insurance companies profit by excluding sick people by refusing care.
This pathologist ( my dads proffession)
is SPOT ON
angell talks about costs in MA and how our attempt at reform has been a disaster
health insurance does not mean health care
Does angell have a new book? I want to read it.
Pathologist=doctors doctor
Not just pathologist. She was editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, etc. Not that a pathologist . . er okay never mind.
angell:
we can’t try for universal coverage without addressing cost. that means something like hr 676.
talks about the problems of the current public / private plans.
Which system *would* Gratzer support? Hmmm/s
she is great
Gratzer is a prick
Jenkins. Prevention cost effective.
Another reason why repug governors f*ck us all when they budget out mental health outpatient services /staff.
dishonest slimly prick.
Obesity.
In Japan they charge you for being over weight..you pay $$$ extra for it in your health care plan
Gratzer=ITS THE PATIENTS FAULT!
Gratzer: penalties. Nah, nah, nah.
For me blaming the patient is a slippery sliding slope.I mean f*ck, the reasoning can get out of hand: Going to certain countries could be considered risky behavior. being gay, risky behavior. Getting overweight could be considered risky behavior. and so on.
Is this that Dr. Gratzer
http://www.manhattan-institute…..ratzer.htm
David Gratzer, a physician, is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. His research interests include consumer-driven health care, Medicare and Medicaid, drug reimportation, and FDA reform. The late Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate in Economics, wrote that Dr. Gratzer is “a natural-born economist.” David Gratzer’s most recent book, with Foreword by Milton Friedman, is The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care (Encounter Books, October 2006).
Previously, Dr. Gratzer authored the book Code Blue: Reviving Canada’s Health Care System (ECW Press, 1999), which was awarded the $25,000 Donner Prize for best Canadian public policy book in 2000 and which is now in its fifth printing. Dr. Gratzer is also the editor of Better Medicine (ECW Press, 2002), a collection of essays from leading health care thinkers in Canada, the United States, and Europe.
not good, if true. It’s discriminatory. So Gratzer advocates discrimination as a form of cost control.
they need more registered nurses on those panels since they do the bulk of the health care work along with aides
Gratzer Q&A. Coffee break!
I agree.
if they can afford it
ack. wtf is gratzer doing in a single payer hearing when single payer advocates haven’t been allowed at any of the other health care hearings?
i used to work (in the usa) with a canadian dr. and she used to go back to canada for any non-emergency health care even though she had good insurance here…. because it cost less, less waits and better care.
Gratzer PAID WHORE
BLAME THE PATIENTS
Hello Dr. Gratzer I could not even afford to go and have a yearly check up forget making it to the Cleveland Clinic
Gratzer
He has been a regular contributor to Conrad Black’s National Post, the London Free Press and the Halifax Sunday Herald, and has written wrote columns on health care in several major newspapers and magazines, including the Toronto Star, Conrad Black’s Ottawa Citizen and the Calgary Herald
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Gratzer
Dr.Angel is an Angel
angell explaining how people with good insurance might get extra unnecessary tests but people without insurance not get the test they need.
I’d like to see Angell and Gratzer go head to head.
thanks!
my ex was in the army and got the cat scan but not the mri or v.v. after a head injury. He died of a screwed up blood vessel.
witness written statements are posted:
U.S. Rep. John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI)
Marcia Angell, M.D
Geri Jenkins, R.N.
Walter Tsou, M.D., M.P.H.
i’m so sorry. (((mui)))
gratzer was clearly raised on the other side of the tracks. When has this guy spent any time in a clinic in an Appalachian community where people are there with no health care coverage or in an inner city where folks are lying in gutters in front of store windows with manequins with more money on their plastic bodies than will ever be spent on that guy living on the streets .
I would put money on Gratzer is the kind of shrink who would rather hand out buckets of medications to our returning Vets “raaather” than make sure they have well deserved long term counseling for their PTSD
price (r-fantasy land) is speaking now.
i’m ignoring him.
It’s okay. Happened many many years ago.
In a way it’s not okay when I hear of substandard care for military and vets. Brings up bad mojo for me.
price=shitty doctor,who couldnt care less
He’s a libertarian clown attempting to channel WF Buckley and a self-parody of every mannerism nobody would ever want in their own personal physician. I wouldn’t fault including him; he’s outnumbered 3 to 1 and a harmless choice of sop to the Rethugs on the committee.
GRATZER=trust my statistics
gratzer talking about medical research here as though that is due to private companies and not gov sponsored research.
Gratzer on the excellence of U.S. medical world “research and development, technology, American drugs, Nobel prizes, in fact combined, this is a country that excels in medicine”
But I can not access any of this along with millions of other Americans. I can not afford health care you arrogant fuck
Price is A LIAR
makes total sense.
as per usual, you are of course correct. thanks.
Careful, people, your mics are still live!
Umm, Gratzer probably has all sorts of free pharmaceutical chachkes that he occasionally fondles, cause he likes to recite the names of all those meds.
A friend told me of a doctor like that.
Panelists need tobring up TE BANKRUPTCY STATISTICS
they are POWERFULL
hearing is on break until 12:15 or 12:20 ET (i think, did i hear that right?)
Angell puts that BS to rest in her book on Big Pharma.
and i’m recording….. *g*
DrSteveB: More Medical Bankruptcy – Have Insurance, Go Bankrupt
at Wikipedia they have him hooked up with Conrad Black. Where is this guy making his dough from, who is filling his pockets? follow that money
FREE DINERS AT EXPENSIVE EATERIES,and Aspen Ski vacations,Lakers tickets
pharmaceutical reps pass all this to docs
So are we to hear testimony from someone other than Gratzer who seems to be getting the lions share of attention?!?
is this the one you were recommending?
The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It
and here’s an essay in NY review of books: The Truth About the Drug Companies By Marcia Angell
hey folks during this break does anyone else have aging parents caught up in the crazy ass maze that our seniors are finding themselves in? I have been in shock as to the wild arsed and screwed up coverage…non coverage that they find themselves in. Really pathetic especially after they have spent life times paying into a system that they thought would be there for them when they hit the wall in their older years
i expect it depends on who is doing the questioning. any Ds who bail on this hearing without good reason are on my shit list.
…. i’m taking a quick break. will be back at 12:15
And . . . Gratzer probably loves the chachkes as well. Little plastic paperweights with names of “new and improved versions (no side effects/s)” of Pr*zac. Little baskets of expensive liquor for the holiday season. oh yeah, the joy of “free” Big Pharma stuff.
Yes.
a dim/dem needs to BRING THIS UP…ilove conyers,but e is slow on teuptake,calling his office now
Oh musicals too in New York! And shopping trips!
I want to hear from more nurses, aides etc who work those hall ways in hospitals, nursing homes, clinics. Gratzer clearly has not spent much time in those hall ways
His tempo is pretty slow motion sometimes.
You know what she said was true for me. I do tend to trust staff nurses better than say, residents, head honcho doctors etc.
here are the list of democrats on this subcommittee:
Robert Andrews, Chairman
David Wu
Phil Hare
John F. Tierney
Dennis J. Kucinich
Marcia Fudge
Dale E. Kildee
Carolyn McCarthy
Rush Holt
Joe Sestak
David Loebsack
Yvette Clarke
Joe Courtney
and while i’m at it, here are the republicans:
John Kline, Ranking Member
Joe Wilson
Cathy McMorris Rodgers
Tom Price
Brett Guthrie
Tom McClintock
Duncan D. Hunter
David P. Roe
as listed at the committee website (Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions)
http://edlabor.house.gov/about/members/
or Gratzer
“Drawing comparisons and conclusions between Canadian and US malpractice insurance
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.g…..obtype=pdf
Not offhand. But this reminds me of a series of articles in MoJo, more on the 401K stuff, but still.
At wikepedia having to do with Gratzer’s use of stats
Lots of folks have disputed his statements and numbers
Gratzer’s work received national and international media attention when Giuliani released a radio ad in New Hampshire that claimed
My chance of surviving prostate cancer — and thank God I was cured of it — in the United States? 82%. My chances of surviving prostate cancer in England? Only 44%, under socialized medicine.[14]
A City Journal article[15] by Gratzer was the source for the claim, in which he wrote
“…if we measure a health care system by how well it serves its sick citizens, American medicine excels. Five-year cancer survival rates bear this out….The survival rate for prostate cancer is 81.2% here, yet 61.7% in France and down to 44.3% in England — a striking variation.”
The claim was contested by the UK Health Secretary.[16] Several American news outlets investigated the matter after the ad was released. According to articles by the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s FactCheck.org, PolitiFact.com (a service of the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly), The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Times, Giuliani’s statistics were “false” and “innumerate.”[17][18][19][20][21][22][23] PolitiFact.com said, “Rudy Giuliani used cancer statistics from a conservative journal to compare the U.S. and the U.K. but the stats are wrong and the underlying comparison is faulty at best.”
“I find it personally distasteful to have Mr. Giuliani exploiting cancer patients to make a political statement,” said Andrew Vickers, associate attending research methodologist at New York’s Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center….”As a prominent individual who is a cancer survivor, I would think it’s more incumbent on him to be accurate in the way he uses cancer statistics,” he said.[20]
After the ad aired, the group which Gratzer cited as his source in the City Journal article, The Commonwealth Fund, issued a statement stating that the five-year survival data cited in the City Journal article could not be calculated from the statistics in that report.[24]
The Washington Post said: “The former New York mayor has had personal experience battling prostate cancer, but he’s confused about the stats, according to several experts we consulted.”
“When you introduce screening and early detection into the equation, the survival statistics become meaningless,” said Howard Parnes, chief of the Prostate Cancer Research Group at the National Cancer Institute. “You are identifying many people who would not otherwise be diagnosed.”….”You can’t say that it’s better to have prostate cancer here or in some other country,” with a developed health care system, said Brantley Thrasher, chairman of the Department of Urology at the University of Kansas, who also serves as a spokesman for the American Urological Association.[25]
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman said that Giuliani’s statistics were “just wrong” and “scare tactics.”[26]
Gratzer later defended the claim: “The mayor is right.”
“Krugman and others have compared statistical apples to oranges. My 44% figure, replicated by economist John Goodman and others, looks at a snapshot in time, based on decade-old OECD data; Krugman’s 74% is a five-year relative survival rate from government sources today.”[27]
Thus the same error of interpretation regarding the snapshot data from the Commonwealth Fund report had earlier been made by John Goodman and his co-authors in their 2004 book Lives at Risk. Reporting that 57 percent of men in the UK who were diagnosed with prostate cancer died from it whereas in the United States only 19 percent of those diagnosed with prostate cancer died from it[28] they too had used the data to draw conclusions about the relative effectiveness of medical practice in the U.S. compared to the UK. It is not clear whether Gratzer had been misled by the Goodman et al. mis-interpretation of the data or whether he had independently done so.
The disputed statistic has also appeared in peer-reviewed journals, including a November 2007 article in The Annals of Thoracic Surgery.[29]
Annenberg’s FactCheck.org disputed Gratzer’s response:
“Marie Diener-West, professor of biostatistics at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said Gratzer’s attempts to calculate cancer survival rates were “inappropriate” and “very misleading.”….Peter Albertsen, professor and chief of urology at the University of Connecticut Health Center, called Gratzer’s calculations a “very dangerous thing to do” and “complete nonsense.”"[18]
In December 2007, The New York Times public editor wrote, “Fact-checking the candidates has long been an important part of campaign coverage,” but that:
“To be most useful, fact-checking needs to be timely. In October, Giuliani incorrectly claimed that the prostate cancer survival rate in England, under the “socialized medicine” he falsely implied Democrats favor, was only 44 percent, compared with 82 percent in the United States. The Times initially said the number for England was “in dispute,” though it provided all the necessary information for a reader to conclude it was wrong. It wasn’t until Friday that the newspaper declared the statistic a “false statement.”"[21]
The Washington Post awarded Giuliani its “Four Pinocchios” rating (reserved for “whoppers”)[30] for his radio ad’s claims and named it one of “the top ten fibs of the year.”[22]
“You would get an F in epidemiology at Johns Hopkins if you did that calculation,” said Johns Hopkins professor Gerard Anderson, whose 2000 study “Multinational Comparisons of Health Systems Data”[31] has been cited by Gratzer as a source for his statistics….Five-year prostate cancer survival rates are higher in the United States than in Britain but, according to Howard Parnes of the National Cancer Institute, this is largely a statistical illusion….Both Anderson and Parnes say that it is impossible, on the basis of the available data, to conclude that Americans have a significantly better chance of surviving prostate cancer than Britons.[32]
As a student, Gratzer has previously became involved in a minor public dispute about the use of statistics, this time by another writer. Responding to an article he had read in in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ), Gratzer had claimed that the article had misused statistics to justify the large reserves held by the Canadian Medical Protective Association (CMPA). The author hotly disputed that his use of statistics was “deceptive”,” nor did it “provide skewed data” or “distort the presentation” ” as Gratzer had claimed.[33] [34].
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Gratzer
Later folks. Out to mow 12 acres. back later to check out what was said. Keep up the great work. Thanks selise for alerting us
How *is* Joe Sestak these days?
justcalled and emailed Conyers aid Maggie
Littleton…who will be sending Conyers via blackberry this
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/…..ptcies/?em
The claim was contested by the UK Health Secretary.[16] Several American news outlets investigated the matter after the ad was released. According to articles by the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s FactCheck.org, PolitiFact.com (a service of the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly), The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Times, Giuliani’s statistics were “false” and “innumerate.”[17][18][19][20][21][22][23] PolitiFact.com said, “Rudy Giuliani used cancer statistics from a conservative journal to compare the U.S. and the U.K. but the stats are wrong and the underlying comparison is faulty at best.”
GRATZER LYING COURT JESTER
dR.pRICE SORRY ASS EXCUSE FOR AN MD
thanks leen. and thanks for your linky goodness.
check out sestak’s comments re single payer:
http://firedoglake.com/2009/05…..oe-sestak/
i am not a fan of his (well, not unless i compare him to specter *g*)
still waiting for hearing to resume…..
The elderly are being fleeced the most, I think.
I’ll make you a promise. When Gratzer stops talking, I’ll shut up and listen.
selise, will you start a new thread for the after-recess part?
have put out the challenge to Micheal Moore on Washington Journal Diane Rehm, Talk of the Nation
sicko 2 documentary on our elderly…get into those nursing homes show the world
hearing resumes.
hare up.
Hare to Gratzer: you must have talked to the miniscule percentage of Canadians who don’t like their coverage (paraphrase). Here we don’t have lines, we just get rejected . . .
Hares disclaimer: I’m a card carrying capitalist. But our system is broken. Greedy insurance companies care only about bottom line. Blaming patients is a suck-ass thing (paraphrase, he didn’t say suckass).
Doesn’t come from “liberal land”, everyone for single payer.
should we have a new thread do you think? i would start a new one if you think so….. (will only a take a minute)
I guess if it’s slow-load.
Jenkins: public facilities under assault. Underfunded.
Canadian gov. sometimes have access problems, send patients to U.S., BUT the govs pay for the care.
new thread!
part 2 of thread for this hearing. please join me at the link – thanks!
Kucinich up.
DENNIS UP
sadlyyes – please join us on new thread
saved by the rain storming…no moving.
Angel exactly King of Jordan can come to the Mayo yet a single working mother of three who has never taken a dime from the state in the form of health care or anything else(and 50 million more) can not afford to get yearly check ups, preventive care…etc etc.
Was thinking about Gratzer’s arguments . The U.S. has great research, medicines etc and some how can not have single payer. You know the “either or” argument. the fat cats have been using that argument in Appalachia for years. We can provide jobs ( power plants, American electric power, etc) but we can not abide by environemntal standards. Jobs of no jobs..”either or” horseshit
Here are some folks that American Electric Power moved. They received I believe 100,ooo or so for moving but had to sign a waiver saying that they would never come back and sue AEP for any health complications
Cheshire Ohio…”jobs vs. health and clean air” Choose
http://www.forgottenoh.com/Cheshire/cheshire.html
Read Marcia Angell. She totally blows those arguments out of the water. What it must have been like to sit there and listen to Gratzer recite the cant!
So Gratzer’s basic message the King or Queen of Jordan will not be able to come to the Mayo if 50 million people are provided with access to health care. Now that argunent makes one feel all warm and cozy.
I would put money on that Gratzer goes to church on Sunday’s too. that type of arrogance really gets under my skin.
For the last 6+ years I’ve been a volunteer neuropathy educator/advocate.writer/publisher – layperson/self taught, trying to help seniors get proper diagnosis and treatment for their neuropathy conditions. There are several major problems for these patients; doctors don’t understand the complexity of these chronic conditions (some 100 different types and 200 causes)and so don’t know how to diagnose neuropathies and don’t know how to treat beyond Big Pharma’s incessantly advertised products of cymbalta and lyrica (Lilly and Phizer). I don’t know much about the various Medicare advantage policies, but I do suspect that you’d find too few relevant and desperately needed services in their EOBs- explanations of benefits. These folks go through years trying to get proper diagnoses and treatments and are very frustrated by the unresponsiveness of the existing systems to get care. If they’re related to many reasonably knowledgeable support groups across the US and if they’ve learned to do internet research, they can begin to acquire some tools to advocate for themselves. If in California they can be related to the Neuropathy Action Foundation and can become trained in how to fight for their rights as medical consumers and can help advocate for state and federal legisltation that can help some of the 20mil folks with neuropathy. There are numerous complementary/alternative medicine treatments that can really help with symptoms, even reverse the nerve damage, but insurance won’t cover them, and doctors don’t know about them unless we teach them. Even the well to do get lousy services. Lucky are the few who have access to Primary Care Providers and Neurologists who have any significant knowledge of neuropathy and can get timely, helpful services. I know folks who’ve been seeking diagnoses for years and are still struggling to get any kind of treatment that would really help them with being zonked out of their minds on meds that can only mask their distress/pain and never do anything about reversing their symptoms or curing even those types that have a possibility of cures.
If you’re homeless and poor, with or without Medicaid or county financed and administered General Assistance with access to pathetic public clinics, you’re lucky to get any medical care, but forget about getting any knowledgeable help for your neuropathy. I’ve talked with a couple of hundred of these folks who responded to public awareness posters placed on Sacramento and Yolo County buses. (Hundreds/if not thousands more folks have seen the posters and gotten to doctors with a some info they’d not had before. They finally have an umbrella name for their various symptoms depicted in a cartoon and a list, along with my number as the Neuropathy Hotline source of information. Their stories break my heart and fill me with rage and despair.
What I know is that current health insurance does not and probably will not cover some really helpful treatments under the proposed best evidence model – because those treatments don’t have the millions to underwrite gold standard (or less) research studies to gain acceptance. I’ve seen Medicare stop payments for treatments that have literally changed people’s lives providing functional capacity, prevented amputations, and extremely costly uneffective “conseravative” treatments.
I have real scares for the future of neuropathy patients, most of whom are seniors (although it can affect any age, depending on the causes, etc.) in whatever comes to be in the “healthcare reform” legislation and administration.
Blessings to all
SELISE THANKS FOR ALL YOU DO ON THIS ISSUE. YOU ARE FANTASTIC.
BLESSINGS TO ALL
thank you for sharing those important insights. My father’s neuropthy was not diagnosed or treated until I was able to get him to a specialist. He has diabetes and was going to the VA for his health care even though both he and my mother had private health insurance. Shocked that the VA did not help him and let it go so long and he is not one to in any way over use the system.
Serious complications now due to the lack of care.
Thanks for what you do.