HCAO News

It’s time for real health care reform

Register-Guard Local Opinion, PUBLISHED:AUG. 22, 2013
By Shelley Pineo-Jensen

Labor unions are joining the movement for universal health care as the next logical step after the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, sometimes called Obamacare. Health care is still a for-profit corporate industry under the ACA. There is a better way.

Some good has been accomplished: The number of people on the Oregon Health Plan will expand starting Jan. 1, 2014; insurance companies can no longer deny coverage for children because of pre-existing conditions; and parents can insure their children up to age 26.

Unfortunately, low-paid nonunion workers have little to celebrate. Additionally, ACA does not protect current levels of coverage for union workers who have negotiated decent health care benefits, as costs continue to climb unrestrained by government regulations.

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Oregon small business owners favor universal health care: survey

by Elizabeth Hayes,  Staff reporter- Portland Business Journal, Aug 19, 2013

A majority of Oregon’s small business owners support universal health care, and although they lack information about federal health reform and the state’s health insurance exchange, they are eager for more information, according to a survey by Main Street Alliance of Oregon.

Those and other findings are part of the group’s Voice of Main Street report, released Monday. It details 373 small business owners’ views on the economy, taxes, immigration, health care and other issues.

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Letter to The Oregonian (unpublished):

by Cliff Goldman, Portland Jobs with Justice

Moda Health's renaming of the Rosa Garden to the drab name of  Moda Center will become the poster child for what's wrong with private health insurance. Here you have a corporation using insurance premium dollars, 40 million of them, for advertising that could otherwise be used for providing medical and dental benefits to more people. Since Moda, aka ODS Heatlh Plans, is advertising, they will undoubtedly get a tax break which means that Moda's renaming of the Rose Garden, will be subsidized by the government, the people.

With publicly funded health insurance, single payer universal health care, there's no corporate profit. No naming- rights deals. Everyone gets medical and dental coverage.

In time we will have publicly funded universal health care! And then every thing will be coming up Roses, once again. 

Medicare Birthday Party, PDX

Payer Agnosticism

By Michael E. Hochman, M.D., M.P.H., Alex Y. Chen, M.D., and Martin Serota, M.R
New England Journal of Medicine
369:502-503 August 8, 2013 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp1303174

Regardless of one's views on a single-payer national health care system, most observers would agree that such a system could simplify processes for health care providers and organizations. Under a single-payer system, health care providers would face a single set of rules — rather than the myriad standards and policies they currently encounter from various insurers. Advocates of a single-payer system argue that greater simplicity could yield savings by reducing administrative waste.

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Montana Experiment Brings NHS-Style Health Care to USA; Saves State Millions, Patients Delighted

Wed Jul 31, 2013 at 09:59 AM PDT
by james32 1 for The Daily Kos

Former Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer has pledged his support for single-payer health care in the past, but his recent efforts to bring zero-cost sharing primary and preventive care to Montana government employees and retirees may be doing something that most progressives would only dream could happen in America: bringing NHS-style, socialized medicine to Montana.

This is a big deal and -- while currently limited to state employees and retirees -- could be laying the groundwork for America's most socially-just health care system. NPR has the details:

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Friedman analysis of HR 676: Medicare for All would save billions

‘Medicare for All’ would cover everyone, save billions in first year: new study

Posted by Don McCanne MD on Wednesday, Jul 31, 2013
Physicians for a National Health Program

Upgrading the nation’s Medicare program and expanding it to cover people of all ages would yield over a half-trillion dollars in efficiency savings in its first year of operation, enough to pay for high-quality, comprehensive health benefits for all residents of the United States at a lower cost to most individuals, families and businesses.

That’s the chief finding of a new fiscal study by Gerald Friedman, a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. There would even be money left over to help pay down the national debt, he said.

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Oregon needs single-payer health care, not ACA

Guest Viewpoint

By Bob Fischer  and Samuel Metz
Published: inThe Eugene Reigster Guard, July 31

It’s not too early to begin the autopsy. President Obama’s Affordable Care Act swallowed its own poison pill, and the diagnosis was delivered by three of the most influential union leaders in America in a letter published July 12 in The Wall Street Journal, and entered into the Congressional Record on July 18.

The letter, addressed to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, was written by the presidents of the Teamsters, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, and UNITE-HERE, the first union to endorse Barack Obama for president.

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The Larger Stakes in the Fight over Medicare

By Peter Shapiro

Forty-eight years ago this month, Lyndon Johnson overcame years of resistance by the medical establishment and signed Medicare into law. It’s as close as this country has ever come to establishing the kind of universal, publicly funded, “single payer” health care system that prevails in most other industrialized countries.  Coming at a time when half the nation’s seniors lived in poverty, its passage quickly demonstrated that it was possible for the federal government to provide health coverage for the   costliest section of the population to insure, at a fraction of the administrative cost required by private industry.

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Medicare ‘cost-savings’ rules pushing costs onto patients

A sick system

By Robert Kuttner for The Boston Globe/Opinion
July 18, 2013

THE COST OF Medicare, the top driver of runaway entitlement outlays, seems to be stabilizing at last. For the past three years, Medicare inflation has moderated to an annual average of 3.9 percent. But if you look more deeply, a lot of these supposed savings are actually a shift in costs to patients. As Congress and the administration devise new ways to restrain Medicare, this disguised form of rationing is likely to worsen.

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Why Is the United States So Sick?

The director of a massive new study says: “It’s almost everything.”
By Laudan Aron for Slate |Posted Sunday, July 21, 2013

In the wake of a startling report highlighting the United States’ poor health compared with other wealthy nations, the report’s director searches for answers.

Americans die younger and experience more injury and illness than people in other rich nations, despite spending almost twice as much per person on health care. That was the startling conclusion of a major report released earlier this year by the U.S. National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine.

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Obama Delays the Obama Care Employer Mandate: Oregon Has Heard This Story Before

Posted by Ann Montague, July 12, 2013

The Treasury Department announced that the Employer Mandate in the Accountable Care Act (ACA) is being delayed (at least) until 2015.  They stated that businesses were "confused about reporting requirements".  Boo Hoo! So the Obama Administration, always concerned about their friends in the business community just said "never mind, don't worry about it until after the 2014 elections". In Oregon we heard this same crying from employers and the Employer Mandate disappeared from the legislation creating the Oregon Health Plan (OHP) in the 1990's which was to become expanded Medicaid that would eventually cover everyone in the state. Dropping the Employer Mandate was a killer.  It meant that OHP did not expand Medicaid as envisioned and actually restricted the number of people on the plan.  At this time, even if an individual has no income and no resources (in the past making them eligible for Medicaid) then they go into a literal "Lottery" system where the State just pulls a certain number every month.  Oregonians can be in the lottery for years.  The elimination of the Employer Mandate however did not stop those of us working for the OHP from getting calls from low wage part time workers. I remember getting calls from new employees of Burger King who said they were given our number and told we were their health insurance. This way businesses like Burger King were hiring workers and  telling them that they will have health coverage. What a deal!

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