Socialization is the opposite of privatization.
What, you don't like greed ? We took a look at what Bernie was up to back in December, 2009:
This HCR Bill: 45,000,000 Get CHC-Single-Payer Vermont Health Care
The battlefield:
Easily 40% of the chronic care bill is theft. "Dr. Bernie Madoff" works as a scam model. "Give this patient more prescriptions. Give her more referrals. She's family." Same psychology as a Ponzi.
Supply-side cost-control, banging theft, is where the money is. CC costs doubled in a decade, where Everything Else moved with inflation plus a point.
That $600-billion haul is why doctors and their enablers give so much money to the GOP.
Up toDecember, 2009, Left-Center energies were wasted pushing for the Public Option insurance boondoggle. Bernie saved the day by focusing 100% on supply-side cost control. He got Harry Reid to pop in a massive expansion to the Kennedy Community Health Care Centers. 14,000 Centers, whipped in on the last day of the Senate's HCR wrangle.
Today the CHC's are the F-16s in an all-out war on medical corruption. Vermont is combining single-payer billing/payables socialization with CHC Referrals Killer tactics.
How's this work for your state ? FOLLOW THE MONEY below the fold :::
Here is proof of the "Dr. Bernie Madoff" scam. Patients with multiple chronic illness get sent on unending Referral Loops. One doctor refers to another doctor who refers to another doctor and on and on.
There is no end to it. And each doctor puts the patient on another medicine, another life-long maintenance prescription. The numbers out of the pharmaceutical sales databases are staggering.
The right side of that graph is accurate. A dozen doctors. Fifty different drugs. That is what happens on average, nationwide to our multiple-condition chronic care patients.
These patients get the worst medical treatment for any category, any nationality of patients in the world. Drug interactions shorten their lives. Drug interactions and running all over to make appointments dominate what is left of the quality of their lives.
Back flow from that $600-billion in scam money to the Republican Party makes it all possible. Otherwise, regulation and control would be trivial to set up -- parallel to what every other country does to protect their citizens.
The scam is exposed in some detail here:
Annals of Medicine
The Cost Conundrum
What a Texas town can teach us about health care
by Atul Gawande June 2009
In 2006, Medicare spent fifteen thousand dollars per enrollee here, almost twice the national average. The income per capita is twelve thousand dollars. In other words, Medicare spends three thousand dollars more per person here than the average person earns.
The explosive trend in American medical costs seems to have occurred here in an especially intense form. Our country’s health care is by far the most expensive in the world. In Washington, the aim of health-care reform is not just to extend medical coverage to everybody but also to bring costs under control. Spending on doctors, hospitals, drugs, and the like now consumes more than one of every six dollars we earn. The financial burden has damaged the global competitiveness of American businesses and bankrupted millions of families, even those with insurance.
It’s also devouring our government. “The greatest threat to America’s fiscal health is not Social Security,” President Barack Obama said in a March speech at the White House. “It’s not the investments that we’ve made to rescue our economy during this crisis. By a wide margin, the biggest threat to our nation’s balance sheet is the skyrocketing cost of health care. It’s not even close.”
Back in the day, them ancient times 2006-2009, Left-Center meant that damned loopy scheme called the Public Option. In essence, that "PO" would have avoided dealing with the $600-billion-a-year corruptions of private medical provision. Start up your own insurance company from scratch ??? Catch all the high-risk patient accounts ? That was the idea.
Thank Gawd For Bernie Sanders.
Bernie's press release hits the main issues of patient care provision:
-- A $10 billion investment in community health centers, expected to go to $14 billion when Congress completes work on health care reform legislation, was included in a final series of changes to the Senate bill unveiled today.
-- The provision... would provide primary care for 25 million more Americans.... (with language broadening coverage in response to rural needs where the clinics can be the sole local health resource for communities.)
-- (This) will help bring about a revolution in primary health care in America and create new or expanded health centers in an additional 10,000 communities.
-- The provision would also provide loan repayments and scholarships through the National Health Service Corps to create an additional 20,000 primary care doctors, dentists, nurse practitioners, physician assistants and mental health professionals.
-- Very importantly, Sanders also said the provision would save Medicaid tens of billions of dollars by keeping patients out of emergency rooms and hospitals by providing primary care when then needed it.
-- The investment would more than pay for itself by saving Medicaid $23 billion over five years on reduced emergency room use and hospital costs, according to a study conducted by George Washington University.
-- Sanders is also working with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) to improve language already in the bill to provide waivers for states that want to provide comprehensive, affordable health care and curb rapidly-rising costs for money-making private health insurance companies. The waivers could clear the way for a state-run, s1ngle-payer system.
-- Sanders has worked with House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) to include $14 billion in the House version of the legislation. (Which had already been done.)
The system of Federally Qualified Health Centers began four decades ago under pioneering legislation by the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. Community health centers now provide primary health care, dental care, mental health counseling and low-cost prescription drugs for about 20 million Americans. Open to everyone, the centers care for patients covered by Medicaid, Medicare and private insurance as well as those who have no insurance.
In Vermont, eight (FQHC) health centers and 40 satellite offices provide primary health care to more than 100,000 patients regardless of their ability to pay. Sanders said that with the additional health care funding it was very likely that new centers would be established in Addison County, Bennington County and perhaps Windham County VT.
Vermont will make single-payer work by moving chronic care to FQHC-CHC clinics. Referrals are limited to what is medically indicated. Prescriptions are monitored with a central database OpenVistA control system -- same logic as Veterans Health Administration management.
No surprise that Texas is run by criminals. Tom DeLay is a local hero. During the 1980's -- after President Reagan had pushed through the 1982 de-regulation "reforms" -- the country had 1,000 S&L's fail with losses from 747 applied to the national budget. Texas led the charge over that cliff.
Vermont is not run by criminals.
Red state. Blue state.
We will see which states stay with ballooned costs for chronic care and which move for single-payer and CHC-model health care provision. Which states are pro-criminal and which are anti-criminal.
You know where the Republicans are going to be. Every one of their national leaders, anyway.