Health Care Reform – Congratulations to Us All

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Posted on 22nd March 2010 by Gordon Johnson in Uncategorized

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If it weren’t so important, it would have been hysterically funny. At 6:34 p.m. yesterday, I got an email that started like this:

Frantic Obama Plan’s Sunday ObamaCare Vote! ALERT: Obama and House Democrats are forcing a “suicide run” on ObamaCare with a Sunday vote but are still short the 216 votes they need to pass ObamaCare. Pelosi’s plan is to break down Blue Dog holdouts in a desperate last ditch effort with a vote on the floor of the House. If they don’t have the votes, they will allow the measure to be defeated.

FAX To STOP ObamaCare NOW!

TELL ALL 261 Democrat/Independent Representatives, Blue Dog Democrats AND President Obama To KILL THIS BILL and CUT HealthCare COSTS FIRST.

I didn’t get it until after the vote. By the time I had pulled myself away from the NCAA tournament and other Sunday activities, I had also gotten an email from Obama’s campaign thanking me for my support in getting health care through, stating:

Gordon —

For the first time in our nation’s history, Congress has passed comprehensive health care reform. America waited a hundred years and fought for decades to reach this moment. Tonight, thanks to you, we are finally here.

Consider the staggering scope of what you have just accomplished:

Because of you, every American will finally be guaranteed high quality, affordable health care coverage.

So I guess I now live in a socialist country.   Oh wait, that has been true since I was in grade school, at least if you believe the Republican rhetoric.  According to Ronald Reagan, , we have all lived in a Socialist country since Medicare passed.  He said this about Medicare in 1961, before the days of email and faxes:

What can we do about this? Well, you and I can do a great deal. We can say right now that we want no further encroachment on these individual liberties and freedoms and that you demand the continuation of our traditional free enterprise system. You and I can do this. The only way we can do it is by writing to our congressmen, even if we believe that he’s on our side to begin with, write to strengthen his hand. Write those letters now. Call your friends and tell them to write.

If you don’t, this program, I promise you, will pass just as surely as the sun will come up tomorrow. And behind it will come other federal programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country… until one day as Norman Thomas said, we will awake to find that we have socialism. And if you don’t do this and if I don’t do it, one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.”

And if you don’t do this and if I don’t do it, one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free.

Ironically, Reagan spent his sunset years protecting Medicare, when he was President.   I wonder if he felt less free?

For a historic perspective on this change, listen to the podcast from OnPoint Radio of today, which can be found at http://www.onpointradio.org/ As my friend Jack Beatty said on this show, the Obama plan is not socialism, but more akin to things that have been proposed by Republican presidents Eisenhower and Nixon, in an effort to stall Democratic proposals to do what Obama finally got done last night.

For those who are advocates for the disabled, this is an important step. It isn’t what American’s should have for coverage, Medicare for all, but it is huge step in the right direction. Ultimately, Barack Obama must get the credit. Often criticized from both the right and the left, he used his intelligent, reasonable and conscientious leadership style to patiently get something done that Presidents Johnson, Clinton and Roosevelt could not do.

Obama deserves the credit because he made “Change” something that galvanized the country. He deserves credit because he found a way, without ever losing the moral superiority of his position, to compromise, cajole and lead his party over every obstacle the “party of no” put in his way. He deserves credit because the excellence of his campaign, the inspiration of his ideas gave the Democrats such a landslide victory in November of 2008, that the Republicans could not stop this.

To echo Barack’s words of last night “Because of you, (President Obama), every American will finally be guaranteed high quality, affordable health care coverage.”

A look at health care plans in Congress

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Posted on 6th July 2009 by Gordon Johnson in Uncategorized

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Will Barack Obama’s legacy be more lasting on health care than Hillary Clinton’s? The next few months will likely tell us. The big controversy is going to focus on whether there is a “public option.” The attackers of reform claim that if there is a public plan, then the private insurers will adversely affected. With an 80 plus percent growth in premiums and a 400% growth in profits during the Bush years, we can certainly hope they will be.

I don’t want to give up my health insurance coverage, but I sure wouldn’t want to be without any coverage, which is where an increasing number of American’s find themselves. Pressure must be put on all Democratic Senators to side with their constituents, not the insurance lobby in Washington to get what the people need, finally, this time.

Attorney Gordon Johnson
http://tbilaw.com
https://waiting.com

Date: 7/6/2009 3:31 AM

The Associated Press


A look at health care legislation taking shape in the Democratic-controlled House and Senate as President Barack Obama pushes to overhaul the system, cover nearly 50 million uninsured Americans and reduce costs. Many of the details are still being negotiated and any final health care bill would have to meld proposals from the House and Senate.

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HOUSE DEMOCRATS

WHO’S COVERED: Around 95 percent of Americans would be covered. Illegal immigrants would not receive coverage.

COST: Unknown.

HOW’S IT PAID FOR: Cuts to Medicare and Medicaid; $600 billion in unspecified new taxes, likely including new levies on upper-income Americans.

REQUIREMENTS FOR INDIVIDUALS: Individuals required to have insurance, enforced through tax penalty with hardship waivers.

REQUIREMENTS FOR EMPLOYERS: Employers must provide insurance to their employees or pay a penalty of 8 percent of payroll. Certain small businesses are exempt.

SUBSIDIES: Individuals and families with annual income up to 400 percent of poverty level ($88,000 for a family of four) would get subsidies to help them buy coverage.

BENEFIT PACKAGE: A committee would recommend an “essential benefits package” that includes hospitalization, doctor visits, prescription drugs and other services. Out-of-pocket costs limited to $5,000 a year for individuals, $10,000 for families. Health insurance companies can offer several tiers of coverage, but all plans must include the core benefits. Insurers wouldn’t be able to deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions.

GOVERNMENT-RUN PLAN: Plan with payment rates initially modeled on Medicare to compete with private insurers.

HOW YOU CHOOSE YOUR HEALTH INSURANCE: Through a new National Health Insurance Exchange open to individuals and, initially, small employers; it would be expanded to large employers over time.

CHANGES TO MEDICAID: The federal-state insurance program for the poor would be expanded to cover all individuals with incomes up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level ($14,404). Currently Medicaid eligibility varies by state, but childless adults are ineligible no matter how poor, and in some states parents with incomes well under the poverty line still aren’t covered.

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SENATE HEALTH, EDUCATION, LABOR AND PENSIONS COMMITTEE

WHO’S COVERED: Aims to cover 97 percent of Americans.

COST: About $600 million over 10 years, but it’s only one piece of a larger Senate bill.

HOW’S IT PAID FOR: Another committee is responsible for the financing.

REQUIREMENTS FOR INDIVIDUALS: Individuals required to have insurance, enforced through tax penalty with hardship waivers.

REQUIREMENTS FOR EMPLOYERS: Employers who don’t offer coverage will pay a penalty of $750 a year per full-time worker. Businesses with 25 or fewer workers are exempted.

SUBSIDIES: Up to 400 percent poverty level.

BENEFIT PACKAGE: Health plans must offer a package of essential benefits recommended by a new Medical Advisory Council. No denial of coverage based on pre-existing conditions.

GOVERNMENT-RUN PLAN: A robust new public plan to compete with private insurers. The plan would be run by the government, but would pay doctors and hospitals based on what private insurers now pay.

HOW YOU CHOOSE YOUR HEALTH INSURANCE: Individuals and small businesses can purchase insurance through state-based American Health Benefit Gateways.

CHANGES TO MEDICAID: Medicaid would be available to individuals with incomes up to 150 percent of the federal poverty level.

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SENATE FINANCE COMMITTEE

WHO’S COVERED: Around 97 percent of Americans. Illegal immigrants would not receive coverage.

COST: Around $1 trillion over 10 years.

HOW’S IT PAID FOR: Possible sources include cuts to Medicare and Medicaid; about $300 billion in revenue from taxing employer-provided health benefits above a certain level; and about $300 billion in revenue from a requirement for employers to pay into the Treasury for employees who get their insurance through public programs.

REQUIREMENTS FOR INDIVIDUALS: Expected to include a requirement for individuals to get coverage.

REQUIREMENTS FOR EMPLOYERS: In lieu of requiring employers to provide coverage, lawmakers are considering penalties based on how much the government ends up paying for workers’ coverage.

SUBSIDIES: No higher than 300 percent of the federal poverty level ($66,150 for a family of four).

BENEFIT PACKAGE: The government doesn’t mandate benefits but sets four benefit categories — ranging from coverage of around 65 percent of medical costs to about 90 percent — and insurers would be required to offer coverage in at least two categories. No denial of coverage based on pre-existing conditions.

GOVERNMENT-RUN PLAN: Unlike the other proposals the Finance Committee’s will likely be bipartisan. With Republicans opposed to a government-run plan, the committee is looking at a compromise that would instead create nonprofit member-owned co-ops to compete with private insurers.

HOW YOU CHOOSE YOUR HEALTH INSURANCE: State-based exchanges.

CHANGES TO MEDICAID: Everyone at 100 percent of poverty would be eligible. Between 100 and 133 percent, states or individuals have the choice between coverage under Medicaid or a 100 percent subsidy in the exchange. The expansion would be delayed until 2013, a late change to save money — the start date had been 2011.

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HOUSE REPUBLICANS

WHO’S COVERED: The House GOP’s plan, in outline form for now, says it aims to make insurance affordable and accessible to all. There aren’t estimates about how many additional people would be covered.

COST: Unknown.

HOW’S IT PAID FOR: No new taxes are proposed, but Republicans say they want to reduce Medicare and Medicaid fraud.

REQUIREMENTS FOR INDIVIDUALS: No mandates.

REQUIREMENTS FOR EMPLOYERS: No mandates; small business tax credits are offered. Employers are encouraged to move to “opt-out” rather than “opt-in” rules for offering health coverage.

SUBSIDIES: Tax credits are offered to “low- and modest-income” Americans. People who aren’t covered through their employers but buy their own insurance are allowed to take a tax deduction. Low-income retirees younger than 65 (the eligibility age for Medicare) would be offered assistance.

BENEFIT PACKAGE: Insurers would have to allow children to stay on their parents’ plan through age 25.

GOVERNMENT-RUN PLAN: No public plan.

HOW YOU CHOOSE YOUR HEALTH INSURANCE: No new purchasing exchange or marketplace is proposed. Health savings accounts and flexible spending plans would be strengthened.

CHANGES TO MEDICAID: People eligible for Medicaid would be allowed to use the value of their benefit to purchase a private p lan if they prefer.

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OBAMA CAMPAIGN PROPOSAL

WHO’S COVERED: All children and many now-uninsured adults.

COST: Estimates as high as $1.6 trillion over 10 years.

HOW’S IT PAID FOR: Obama proposed cuts within the health care system and raising taxes on households making more than $250,000 annually.

REQUIREMENTS FOR INDIVIDUALS: Unlike his Democratic primary opponent Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama did not propose an “individual mandate.” Instead he would have required all children to be insured, making it the parents’ responsibility.

REQUIREMENTS FOR EMPLOYERS: Large employers would have been required to cover their employees or contribute to the costs of a new government-run plan.

SUBSIDIES: Obama proposed giving subsidies to low-income people but didn’t detail at what level.

BENEFIT PACKAGE: Insurers participating in a new health exchange would have had to offer packages at least as generous as a new public plan. All insurers would have been prohibited from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions, and would have had to cover children through age 25 on family plans.

GOVERNMENT-RUN PLAN: A new public plan would have offered comprehensive insurance similar to that available to federal employees.

HOW YOU CHOOSE YOUR HEALTH INSURANCE: Through a new National Health Insurance Exchange where individuals could buy the new public plan or qualified private plans.

CHANGES TO MEDICAID: Would have expanded Medicaid eligibility, but didn’t specify income levels.

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Sources: Associated Press research, Kaiser Family Foundation, Lewin Group.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.

Busy Gupta performs brain surgery, reports for CNN

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Posted on 7th January 2009 by Gordon Johnson in Uncategorized

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Date: 1/7/2009

By DAVID BAUDER
AP Television Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — If Barack Obama wants a surgeon general with visibility to promote health issues in his administration, it can’t hurt to hire a CNN correspondent called one of People magazine’s “sexiest men alive.”

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a practicing neurosurgeon and one of CNN’s busiest personalities, is under consideration by the president-elect for the job. Should the offer come, CNN said Gupta has indicated he is likely to take it. Obama will have a man who has interrupted a TV assignment to perform emergency brain surgery and gotten into it on air with Michael Moore.

He has a weekend health show on CNN and has traveled across the country for a series on the dangers of obesity called “Fit Nation.” Soon he may have the chance to do something similar for the government.

Gupta, 39, grew up in the Detroit area, the son of parents who moved from India in the 1960s to work at a Ford plant. He earned undergraduate and medical degrees from the University of Michigan.

While he works at CNN and for CBS News, Gupta is also a faculty member at the neurology department at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. He performs surgery at Emory University Hospital and Grady Memorial Hospital.

Gupta’s no stranger to the White House; he was one of 15 White House fellows appointed in 1997 and he advised Hillary Rodham Clinton while she was first lady.

Gupta joined CNN in 2001 as a health correspondent. In addition to efforts like “Fit Nation” and 2008 documentaries on the health toll taken on presidents, Gupta has talked about health angles of the 2001 terrorist attacks, the war in Iraq and Hurricane Katrina. Since 2006, he’s also had a contract with CBS News to do health stories on the “CBS Evening News.”

“He’s an amazing communicator,” said CBS News President Sean McManus. “He has a way of breaking down the most complicated medical and health issues into language that everyone understands. He’s very, very likable and he has the ultimate credibility in that he is literally a brain surgeon.”

When reporting for CNN on a U.S. Navy medical team in Iraq in 2003, Gupta unexpectedly became part of the story when he was called upon to conduct emergency brain surgery on a 2-year-old Iraqi boy shot by U.S. Marines when he was in a car that did not stop at a checkpoint. The boy did not survive.

“Medically and morally, I thought it was absolutely the right thing to do,” Gupta told The Associated Press at the time. “It was a heroic — it was not an elective operation, it was a heroic attempt to try to save the child’s life.”

Gupta took on “Sicko” filmmaker Moore in 2007, saying in a fact-checking report that Moore had fudged some facts in his documentary on the health care system. It led to an angry on-air confrontation between them. “I and others are going to be a lot more skeptical with what I see on CNN,” Moore said.

People magazine named Gupta one of its sexiest men in 2003, two years before he married his longtime girlfriend Rebecca Olson. People said Gupta lived dangerously by sometimes driving his Jaguar XK8 too fast and had fans who called themselves the Gupta Girls.

He has made a handful of political donations to Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

In a 2005 segment on CNN’s “Paula Zahn Now” on health problems that were surfacing with widely used prescription drugs such as Vioxx, Gupta talked about drug companies’ efforts to woo physicians by offering everything from free pens to free trips. He admitted that he had accepted pens from time to time.

“If you take a pen, are you going to prescribe that drug more often? I haven’t seen a situation where the drug company says, listen, we’ll only give you X if you prescribe the drug so many times. I haven’t seen that, that transparent a sort of thing,” Gupta told Zahn.

“But there is a sort of more implicit sort of understanding between the pharmaceutical companies and doctors, I think. It is not so clear that they’ll say, OK, you got to do X number of procedures and we’ll give you a trip to Aspen, or you got to prescribe the drug so many times and we’ll give a free lunch. You don’t see that. But there is a sort of, again, nudge, nudge, wink, wink.”

Gupta’s show “House Call” airs Saturday and Sunday mornings. He also does a global health program for CNN International.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.