Tag Archives: healthcare-

The Green New Deal is quickly becoming a test for 2020 Democrats

by NataliaBrunning Posted on February 7, 2019

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New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey released their non-binding Green New Deal resolution Thursday morning; it outlines a vision of the future that’s a lot different from the one we’re in.

We’re talkin’ universal healthcare, a federal jobs guarantee, a transition to clean energy in a matter of decades, and more, much more. It’s a lot — and would have a tough slog becoming law in this Congress. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has already labeled the ambitious proposal “a suggestion.”

But the vague scope of the deal is intended to be a feature, not a bug. Believe it or not, the policies that would make up a Green New Deal aren’t actually meant to pass Congress just yet. Gasp! No really, welcome to politics. The resolution serves up two big questions: The less central one is, can House Democrats rally behind this ambitious climate proposal?

Remember, Pelosi isn’t running for president, and if this deal ever comes to the table, its proponents are banking on a new president in the White House and Democratic leadership in both houses of Congress. Which brings us to the main question: Can 2020 Democrats throw their support behind this level of bold climate action?

What’s included in Thursday’s proposal is just as important as what’s left out, particularly when it comes to getting presidential candidates on board. The resolution doesn’t exclude a price on carbon — an emissions-reducing mechanism favored by liberals and some conservatives — nor is there a strict definition of what “100 percent renewable energy” means. So someone like Cory Booker, a 2020 presidential candidate who happens to support nuclear energy, can comfortably put his name down as a cosigner of the new resolution.

Including Booker, five presidential candidates have cosigned AOC and Markey’s resolution: Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, Bernie Sanders. Former Housing Secretary Julián Castro hasn’t explicitly said he backs this proposal, but he has expressed support for a Green New Deal in the past. Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Hawaii Senator Tulsi Gabbard, and former Maryland Representative John Delaney haven’t indicated if they support the proposed resolution yet.

With heavyweights like Warren and Harris on board, it’s becoming clear that a progressive Green New Deal will likely be a central tenet of any Democrat’s 2020 agenda. “We’re going to press all elected officials, especially 2020 contenders, to support this resolution. Where they stand on the resolution will make it clear who is using the Green New Deal as a buzzword and who is serious about transforming our economy in line with what science and justice demand,” Stephen O’Hanlon, communications director of the youth-led climate advocacy group Sunrise Movement said in an emailed statement.

For the likes of Gillibrand and Booker, signing on now is a quick way to make inroads with parts of the Democratic base. For Warren and Sanders, this proposal is catnip for their supporters.

So what all are these candidates putting their names on? Even taking vague language into account, there are a lot of ambitious elements in the resolution:

A job for every American: “guaranteeing a job with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and disability leave, paid vacations, and retirement security to all people of the United States.”
A right to unionize: “strengthening and protecting the right of all workers to organize, unionize, and collectively bargain free of coercion, intimidation, and harassment.”
Death to monopolies: “ensuring a commercial environment where every businessperson is free from unfair competition and domination by domestic or international monopolies.”
Healthcare for everyone! And … housing for everyone? “[P]roviding all members of society with high-quality health care, affordable, safe and adequate housing, economic security, and access to clean water, air, healthy and affordable food, and nature.”

As you can see, this isn’t your run-of-the-mill resolution. We’ll see how many of these ambitious plot points survive the journey through the Washington machine.

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The Green New Deal is quickly becoming a test for 2020 Democrats

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Paul Ryan Isn’t Even Trying to Pass a Health Care Bill Anymore

by hwahuondekermade Posted on April 28, 2017

Mother Jones

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The LA Times reports that House Republicans have steadfastly refused to reach out to Democrats in an effort to pass their health care bill. This is no surprise. They’re well aware of how they suckered Democrats in 2009, killing months of time in “talks” even though none of them ever planned to support Obamacare. They figure Democrats would do the same to them, and they’re right.

But then we get this:

And senior House Republicans and White House officials have almost completely shut out doctors, hospitals, patient advocates and others who work in the healthcare system, industry officials say, despite pleas from many healthcare leaders to seek an alternative path that doesn’t threaten protections for tens of millions of Americans.

….Health insurers, who initially found House Republicans and Trump administration officials open to suggestions for improving insurance markets, say it is increasingly difficult to have realistic discussions, according to numerous industry officials. “They’re not interested in how health policy actually works,” said one insurance company official, who asked not to be identified discussing conversations with GOP officials. “It’s incredibly frustrating.”

Another longtime healthcare lobbyist, who also did not want to be identified criticizing Republicans, said he’d never seen legislation developed with such disregard for expert input. “It is totally divorced from reality,” he said.

It’s increasingly obvious that Republicans aren’t actually trying to pass a health care bill. They just want to be able to tell their base that they tried. And President Trump wants to erase the taste of defeat from the first health care bill.

If House Republicans were serious, they’d engage with the health care industry. They haven’t. If they were serious they’d care about the CBO score. They don’t. If they were serious they’d be crafting a bill that could pass Senate reconciliation rules. They aren’t even trying. If Senate Republicans were serious they’d be weighing in with a bill of their own. They aren’t wasting their time.

In the beginning, I think Paul Ryan really did want to pass something, mainly so that it would make his tax cut plan easier to pass. But he’s given up on that. At this point he just wants a piece of paper that gets 218 votes and demonstrates that the Republican caucus isn’t hopelessly inept. He knows it will be DOA in the Senate, but at least it will get health care off his plate once and for all. Then he can move on to cutting taxes on the rich, which is what he really cares about. And he’ll have no trouble rounding up votes for that.

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Paul Ryan Isn’t Even Trying to Pass a Health Care Bill Anymore

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Ben Carson and the Conservative Grift Machine

by GustavoScarberry Posted on November 28, 2015

Mother Jones

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In the LA Times today Joseph Tanfani and Maloy Moore have a great piece about the American Legacy PAC and its 2014 Save Our Healthcare campaign. It was fronted by Ben Carson, who starred in a video denouncing Obamacare and told viewers, “If you want to hold Washington accountable and truly save American health care, join me and sign our petition today.” Needless to say, when you called the toll-free number, it turned out that Carson wanted more than just your John Hancock. He also wanted your Benjamins:

When Juanita McMillon saw his name, she was eager to get out her checkbook. “I think he is sincere, and I think he is honest, and I think he is exactly what we need,” said McMillon, 80, from the small town of De Kalb in northeast Texas. She gave $350….American Legacy raised close to $6 million in 2014 — and spent nearly all of it paying the consultants and firms that raised the money. Just 2% was donated to Republican candidates and committees, financial reports show.

“I’m really careful who I give money to, but I guess I did not read it close enough,” McMillon said, adding that she had never heard of American Legacy. “I prefer to give money to individuals, and I assumed, I guess, that Dr. Carson was getting my money.”

Though American Legacy didn’t raise much money for Obamacare-hating Republicans, it was a success at something else — finding people willing to give to Carson….When Carson entered the race, the campaign tapped those donors again. Donnell gave another $250 to the campaign, and McMillon another $450. Of the more than 4,000 donors to American Legacy, more than 25% also ended up giving to the Carson campaign, a Los Angeles Times analysis showed.

This is good reporting, but so far there’s nothing all that new here. Conservatives have turned grifting into a high art, and Carson is just the flavor of the month. What makes this piece great is the response from Doug Watts, Carson’s campaign spokesman:

Watts defended the American Legacy effort and offered assurance to donors. “I would say to those people, you did give to Dr. Carson,” Watts said. “They participated in the building of a list” of donors for the campaign.

Booyah! By giving money to Carson’s anti-Obamacare campaign, you identified yourself as a soft touch who would give Carson even more money later on. And that’s a big help. Of course, these elderly donors thought they were helping Carson fight Obamacare, because, you know, that’s what Carson actually said. But what’s the difference? Tomayto, tomahto.

Anyway, read the whole thing if you’ve got the stomach for it.

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Ben Carson and the Conservative Grift Machine

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A Superbug Nightmare Is Playing Out at an LA Hospital

by Casey Wood Posted on February 19, 2015

Mother Jones

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In today’s terrifying health news, the LA Times reports that two medical scopes used at UCLA’s Ronald Reagan Medical Center may have been contaminated with the potentially deadly, antibiotic-resistant bacteria Carbapenem-Resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE). Two patients have died from complications that may be connected to the bacteria, and authorities believe that 179 more patients have been exposed.

Most healthy people aren’t at risk of catching a CRE infection, but in hospitals this bacteria can be quite dangerous: CRE kills as many as half of all people in whom the infection has spread to the bloodstream. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are working with the CA Department of Public Health to investigate the situation, which is expected to result in more infections.

The problem isn’t just in Los Angeles, though. Last month USA Today reported that hospitals around the country struggle with transmissions of bacteria on these scopes—medical devices commonly used to treat digestive-system problems—and there have been several other under-the-radar outbreaks of CRE.

This is pretty scary stuff, considering that in the antibiotics arms race against bacteria, we are starting to fall behind. Due in large part to unnecessary medical prescriptions and overuse of antibiotics in our food supply, these superbugs are on the rise. In a study published last year that focused specifically on hospitals in the Southeastern United States, researchers reported that CRE cases had increased fivefold between 2008 and 2012.

As Mother Jones‘ Tom Philpott wrote recently, unless something changes, it will only get worse:

in a new report, the UK government has come out with some startling global projections. Currently, the report finds, 700,000 people die annually from pathogens that have developed resistance to antibiotics, a figure the report calls a “low estimate.” If present trends continue, antibiotic failure will claim 10 million lives per year by 2050, the report concludes. That’s more carnage than what’s currently caused by cancer and traffic accidents combined.

The CDC has, in recent years, amped up its efforts to contain the growth of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and ha developed a tool-kit to help educate both patients and medical practitioners. The Obama administration has increased funding in 2015 for CDC research into how to better detect these types of infections. It also expanded the National Healthcare Safety Network to track threats of superbugs and areas of antibiotic overuse.

But the CDC emphasizes that more must be done:

Can you imagine a day when antibiotics don’t work anymore? It’s concerning to think that the antibiotics that we depend upon for everything from skin and ear infections to life-threatening bloodstream infections could no longer work. Unfortunately, the threat of untreatable infections is very real.

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A Superbug Nightmare Is Playing Out at an LA Hospital

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Good News From the ER: Hospital Mistakes Are on the Decline

by JacelynBoland Posted on December 2, 2014

Mother Jones

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Let’s continue our good news theme this morning. For the past few years, via several different programs, the federal government has been working hard to get hospitals to adopt practices that rein in the curse of “hospital acquired conditions”—also known as HACs. These are things like prescription mistakes, central line infections, slips and falls, and so forth. Today, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality released a report showing that HACs have been declining since these programs began in 2010.

The chart on the right tells the basic story. HACs declined a bit in 2011, and then fell even further in 2012 and 2013. By now, they’ve declined by a cumulative total of 17 percent. The AHRQ reports estimates that this represents 1.3 million HACs that have been prevented and 50,000 lives that have been saved. It’s also reduced health care costs by about $12 billion.

Much of this has been due to a laundry list of reforms introduced by Obamacare. So not only has Obamacare provided affordable health coverage for millions, but it’s reduced hospital errors by one out of every six and saved tens of thousands of lives in the process. Not bad.

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Good News From the ER: Hospital Mistakes Are on the Decline

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Hooray! This Young Billionaire Actually Invented Something Useful

by YvetteSepulveda Posted on October 2, 2014

Mother Jones

Elizabeth Holmes is the third-youngest billionaire on the Forbes 400 list (behind Facebook tycoons Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz). And hooray for her! Her business model doesn’t depend on getting drunk teenagers to eventually regret that they ever heard of the internet. It depends instead on a genuinely useful invention: a new type of blood test that requires only a tiny pinprick and a single drop of blood. Slate’s Kevin Loria tells us about it:

Traditional blood testing is shockingly difficult and expensive for a tool that’s used so frequently. It also hasn’t changed since the 1960s. It’s done in hospitals and doctors’ offices. Vials of blood have to be sent out and tested, which can take weeks using traditional methods and is prone to human error. And, of course, sticking a needle in someone’s arm scares some people enough that they avoid getting blood drawn, even when it could reveal lifesaving information.

Holmes recognized that process was ripe for disruption….The new tests can be done without going to the doctor, which saves both money and time. Most results are available in about four hours….Blood samples have traditionally been used for one test, but if a follow-up was needed, another sample had to be drawn and sent out—making it less likely that someone would get care. The Theranos approach means the same drop can be used for dozens of different tests.

It’s cheap, too. One common criticism of the healthcare system is that the pricing structure is a confusing labyrinth that makes it impossible to know how much anything costs. Theranos lists its prices online, and they’re impressive.

It so happens that I’ve been getting more than the usual amount of blood drawn lately, and it also so happens that I’m one of those people who really hates this. My angst is for completely irrational reasons. I know it doesn’t hurt; it doesn’t take long; and it poses no danger. As it happens, my own particular phobia is so bizarre and unaccountable that I’m reluctant to even fess up to it. But it’s this: The scarless incision wigs me out. For the rest of the day after a blood test, I’m convinced that any second it’s going to pop open like an oil gusher. I used to keep that little cotton ball taped on for a full 24 hours, until the next day’s shower finally forced me to take it off. I have recently, through sheer force of will, started taking it off after only a few hours.

This makes no sense. But then, phobias rarely do. And mine isn’t even that bad. When I need to get blood drawn, I do it. Still, I often put it off, and I refuse to get it done more than once every two weeks or so. I also refuse to ever have it done in my right arm.

By now, you’re either laughing at me or else wondering if I’ve lost my marbles. But I agree with Holmes: traditional blood testing is barbaric and medieval and it’s long past time to bring it into the 21st century. So hooray for Elizabeth Holmes. My only question now is this: When is she going to sign a contract with Kaiser so that I’ll be able to benefit from her marvelous invention?

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Hooray! This Young Billionaire Actually Invented Something Useful

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Hospitals Report Big Drop in Uninsured Admissions in Blue States

by GermanMansour Posted on May 12, 2014

Mother Jones

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Jason Millman has been listening in on earnings calls for publicly traded hospital chains, and he says they all report a big difference in admissions between states that expanded Medicaid and those that didn’t:

The Hospital Corporation of America…saw a 22.3 percent growth in Medicaid admissions, compared to a 1.3 percent decline in non-expansion states. The company also had a 29 percent decline in uninsured admissions in the expansion states, while non-expansion states experienced 5.9 percent growth in uninsured admissions, chief financial officer William Rutherford said.

Community Health Systems, with facilities in 29 states, also noticed an expansion gap. In expansion states it serves, CHS said it saw self-pay i.e., uninsured admissions drop 28 percent while Medicaid admissions increased by 4 percent. Self-pay emergency room visits decreased 16 percent in expansion states, but they increased in non-expansion states, the company said in its earnings call last week.

Tenet Healthcare reported last week that it had a 17 percent increase in Medicaid inpatient visits while uninsured visits decreased 33 percent in the four expansion states where it operates. In non-expansion states, Medicaid admissions dropped 1 percent as uninsured care rose 2 percent.

This is why hospitals support Medicaid expansion so strongly. Medicaid may not pay a lot, but on average it pays a lot better than uninsured patients. A drop of around 30 percent in uninsured admissions is a big win for the patients, but it’s also a big win for the hospitals.

Normally, of course, that would be enough to gain Republican support all by itself, but not in the world of Obamacare. The fact that Medicaid expansion benefits the poor, benefits hospitals, probably benefits state finances, and is all but free to participating states—well, it’s just not enough. Demonstrating their tribal opposition to all things Obama is far more important.

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Hospitals Report Big Drop in Uninsured Admissions in Blue States

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Quote of the Day: Tax Reform Is Dead On Arrival

by WendellFarncomb Posted on February 26, 2014

Mother Jones

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From Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, commenting on his House colleague Dave Camp’s tax reform bill:

I think we will not be able to finish the job, regretfully. I don’t see how we can.

And….that’s a wrap, folks. Tax reform is officially a dead letter before poor old Dave Camp even had a chance to unveil his plan.

Naturally, McConnell blames this sad state of affairs on Democrats, because what else would he do? But I think everyone understands the real truth here: Republicans have no stomach for debating tax reform in an election year. Why? For the usual reason: everyone loves lower rates, but no one has the guts to so much as discuss the tax breaks they’d close to make up for the lower rates. Paul Ryan refuses to do this on an annual basis when he releases his latest budget roadmap. Mitt Romney famously tap danced around the subject for months in 2012. No one wanted to open this can of worms during either the fiscal cliff negotiations or any of the sequester standoffs.

Nothing has changed since then. If you talk about the mortgage interest deduction, you piss off millions of homeowners. If you talk about the carried interest loophole, you piss off billions of dollars worth of hedge fund managers. If you talk about the charitable deduction, every church in America will go ballistic. If you talk about 401(k)s, you piss off old people. If you talk about the exclusion of healthcare benefits from taxation, you piss off every middle-class worker in America. If you talk about capital gains rates, you might as well just kiss off your membership in the conservative movement.

“Broadening the base” sounds great when you use bloodless terms like “broadening the base.” But when you translate that into actual tax deductions you want to get rid of, it doesn’t sound so great at all. Mitch McConnell knows this perfectly well, and he wants this particular Pandora’s Box to stay well and truly sealed for at least the next eight months. His mama didn’t raise no fools.

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Quote of the Day: Tax Reform Is Dead On Arrival

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Here’s Yet Another Obamacare Non-Horror Story

by ConnorWattersto Posted on January 31, 2014

Mother Jones

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Here in California, we keep feeling the hammer blows of Obamacare. Thanks to the new law, our state’s largest individual health insurer is being forced to jack up insurance premiums for thousands of — oh wait. Let’s read the fine print here:

Thousands of Anthem Blue Cross individual customers with older insurance policies untouched by Obamacare are getting some jarring news: Their premiums are going up as much as 25%….Anthem Blue Cross said its plan to raise rates reflects that escalating healthcare costs are an economic reality industrywide.

The company said customers do have new options thanks to the healthcare law. “Many of the members affected here may be eligible for federal subsidies via the Covered California exchange and may have lower premiums if they decide to switch to an Affordable Care Act-compliant policy,” company spokesman Darrel Ng said.

Roger that. Premiums are skyrocketing for policies that have nothing to do with Obamacare. What’s more, Anthem Blue Cross is recommending that affected customers might want to check out the Obamacare exchange to see if they can get a better deal there.

This is yet another reason to be skeptical of claims that Obamacare is responsible for rate shock all over the country. It’s not a myth. It really has happened to some people. But the truth is that it affects only a small number of people; the horror story anecdotes routinely turn out to be either exaggerated or flatly false; and insurance companies have been jacking up rates for years anyway. They were going to do it in 2014 whether Obamacare existed or not.

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Here’s Yet Another Obamacare Non-Horror Story

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Chart of the Day: The Obamacare Website Has Been Working Pretty Well Since Early November

by london Posted on December 2, 2013

Mother Jones

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Yesterday the Obama administration released a report showing that the healthcare.gov website is now working pretty well. Not perfectly. Not flawlessly. But pretty well. This confirms anecdotal reports that the site is now quite useable, and it’s important because it’s a proof of concept: if the site can go from disaster to workable in a couple of months, it means that its problems aren’t so deeply structural that they’re never going to be fixed. They were just bugs. And bugs get corrected.

But here’s the thing that struck me when I looked at the HHS report last night: if their metrics are to be believed, they actually had the site working pretty well by early November. It’s just that they didn’t say much about it, instead waiting until their self-imposed December 1 deadline—due, I assume, to an abundance of caution after the horrible rollout. Still, take a look. The charts below are both big and barely legible (perhaps suggesting a whole different federal government IT problem) but what they consistently show is that the site was working tolerably well by November 9 and pretty acceptably well by November 16 (marked by the red bubbles). These metrics still don’t show great performance—especially the 95 percent uptime metric, which really needs to be 99+ percent—but if you need to buy health coverage via healthcare.gov, you can do it. And that means that Obamacare is working too.

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Chart of the Day: The Obamacare Website Has Been Working Pretty Well Since Early November

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