(my health care series is now on Fridays)
I do not doubt that Ezra Klein is a nice guy and some sort of an oh so "respectable liberal" blogger.  But he does seem to getting a terrible case of inside-the-beltway corporate tunnel vision when it comes to health insurance reform.

In recent months he has repeatedly been promoting Senator Wyden' plan as the sort of supposedly bipartisan proposal that could break a Senate filibuster and lead to health care reform". He has been completely dismissive of Conyers HR-676 single player plan in the House, to the extent of not bringing it up directly and by name in any discussion.

Wyden's plan has 6 Dems and 6 Repugs as co-sponsors, the supposed bipartisan basis for its being serious. That makes for 12% of the Senate backing it. Meanwhile Conyer's plan has 90 co-sponsors or 20% of the House. Surely that is worth discussing by name and in detail?

During the 2004 Presidential Campaign, 11 states voted to ban gay marriage. Only 2 of these states were "blue states", voting for Kerry over Bush. One was Oregon, the other Michigan. Today the Michigan Supreme Court, in a 5-2 ruling, stated that the ban

against gay marriage also blocks governments and state universities from offering health insurance to the partners of gay workers.

Note. The court ruled that governments and state universities are blocked from offering health insurance to partners of gay workers. Sorry, its not even optional.

This diary will be a short (and I hope clear) exposition of why nearly every economist thinks that eliminating the gas tax for three months is more than just cheal pandering-it's also a bad idea. I'll also talk a little about what is wrong with health care mandates. But before I get started, I thought I would share some shocking new photos of Bill and Hillary Doing what they do best.

On Friday while I was eating my lunch, I was explaining to my lunchmates why the "free market" is not adequately addressing our current energy crisis in this country.  "...Eventually, the free market will kick in, but in the meantime, people are going to feel a lot of pain..." As soon as those words tumbled out of my mouth, I thought back to something my chiropractor said to me about a year and a half ago, "Tony it appears that you have a really high threshold of pain, and I'm not so sure that is a good thing." The people of my district, like so many rural people, like Americans in general have a high tolerance for pain.  Though there is something to be said for rugged individualism, at some point, enough is enough, we must get some relief.

I lived in the UK for 7 years and used their National Health Care system many times.  It was great.  My wife and I had 2 of our children there, and after the kid's births, a nurse would stop by our house every 2 weeks to check up, have a chat, and give our babies well check ups.  They would offer advise and tips to my wife and i, and were so awesome.  I was working part-time but no worries about bills of course.

Meanwhile, my brother was in the States and was knocked out of his job, he was a cop.  Lost his health care. And thus began my education of what my brother's life was like to have no health insurance.  

You've been wondering, I'm sure, exactly how unfair our healthcare system has become.  Very, very unfair is the answer.

This reality takes on a new urgency as John McCain goes around the country promoting a bogus "healthcare plan" for the American people.  A "plan" that would exclude him with his pre-existing conditions, if he were not a U.S. Senator, and a recipient of heavily taxpayer subsidized government healthcare.

And since the media refuses to ask the maverick about his own healthcare benefits, which he wants to deny to you and me, I decided to do some research--to get a handle on exactly what people like John and Cindy McCain receive.

Locating information about their Cadillac Healthcare isn't easy.  It's buried deep in vaults inside the office of OPM which essentially acts as the HR department for the federal government.

But I've been able to piece together the disgusting reality.

After OPM, you go is the web site of the Federal Employee Health Benefits Plan (FEHBP).

It came in the mail today, my insurance card.  Many of you know that I currently reside in Germany.  I taught at an university for an academic year.  Unfortunately, it was only 11 months and the law stated that I needed to work 12 months to continue my insurance.  I have been without health insurance for two years.  Last April (and I only found out about this a couple of weeks ago, duh), the new Health Insurance Reform Act went into effect.  It said that not only must every resident be insured by 1 January 2009, but that also anyone who had health insurance before MUST be taken back under their plan.

That headline caught my eye at Slate today, so I figured, what the hell, click through and read this trainwreck of an Apologia by Mark Gimein.

Please Note - This health care series will be on Fridays from now on.

An opinion(.pdf) piece by a political scientist Lawrence Jacobs in this week's New England Journal of Medicine (which despite the name is the most prestigious english language medical journal in the world) reiterates a point that many have been making that

The current moment in U.S. health care reform is eerily reminiscent of the lead-up to the 1992 election. Then, as now, the country was facing an economic downturn and had been engaged in awar in the Middle East that threatened to distract attention from domestic matters. There was also unusually broad agreement among Americans and the presidential candidates that health care arrangements needed reform — a negative consensus that still holds today. At the end of the 1992 primary season, as now, Americans ranked health care among the four most important problems facing the country.

And look at this graph of public opinion!

There's an avalanche of bad news about healthcare. It's  making me very worried.

But before I lay all that on you, here's the good news.

The good news is Elizabeth Edwards. Elizabeth is smacking down John McCain at every turn in the road.

You know, I really should be reading a grant right now, but after seeing this article from yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, I am just too angry – and scared – to focus on anything else.

It begins thus:

When Lisa Kelly learned she had leukemia in late 2006, her doctor advised her to seek urgent care at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. But the nonprofit hospital refused to accept Mrs. Kelly's limited insurance. It asked for $105,000 in cash before it would admit her.

Sitting in the hospital's business office, Mrs. Kelly says she told M.D. Anderson's representatives that she had some money to pay for treatment, but couldn't get all the cash they asked for that day. "Are they going to send me home?" she recalls thinking. "Am I going to die?"

The Los Angeles Times this morning, reporting on a new Kaiser Family Foundation poll:

WASHINGTON -- Some people marry for love, some for companionship, and others for status or money. Now comes another reason to get hitched: health insurance.

In a poll released today, 7% of Americans said they or someone in their household decided to marry in the last year so they could get healthcare benefits via their spouse.

Can't wait to hear the right-wing wurlitzer crank up to demand universal health insurance to preserve the sanctity of wedlock. Surely all those desperately non-insured brides and grooms hooking up are threatening the marriages of all the rest of us. Right?

After reading the demographic post on health care. I went online to see how much health care would cost me if my employer didn't provide it for me.
I went to one of the top sites found by Google (sadly I don't remember which one). I filled in my name, address, phone. standard stuff, and got a list of quotes from various plans. Kaiser, Aetna, Blue Cross, and a wide range of costs in a search engine style results page. (about $380/month for a plan somewhat less than I have with Kaiser right now).  I was worried about the eventual spam, but figured that it wouldn't be a big deal.
Oops.
I kid you not. Within 5 minutes of filing in the survey, I received not one but THREE CALLS ON MY PHONE, from health insurance brokers wanting to provide me with health insurance. Each explaining how they could provide me peace of mind, and quickly ending the conversation when I said I had health insurance and was just doing research.  Over this afternoon alone, I have received 6 emails offering me different plans.
This is way harder sell that I expected..

This is Day Two of John McSame's "Call to Action" (I kid you not), Healthcare Tour.

Yesterday he was at Miami Children's Hospital.  Here's a video of several desperate parents explaining to McBush what it's like to have a sick child.

As you might expect, the fawning media stenographers are taking dictation very well.  This morning, Mike Allen a well-insured stenographer at The Politico weighs in.

McCain moves to middle on health care

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is proposing a greater federal commitment to people without health insurance on Tuesday, suggesting that it help funds states to set up non-profit risk pools to help Americans who are denied coverage or can’t afford it.

http://www.politico.com/...

In honor of the semi-BS "Cover the Uninsured Week" this week's poll asks: Do you Have Health Insurance, and if so, What Kind?

Blogwhore 1: As always, it's best if this poll stays up as a "Recommended Diary" for a full 24 hours, so that it will get an equivalent sample of us - morning to night, east & wst coast. So please click on Recommend.

Blogwhore 2: I've been & will be a regular here with Demographic Tuesday & Health Care Thursdays. But, I also wanted to let the world know that I just set up my own blog at http://rootedcosmopolitan.blogspot.com. Also, for more health care, see group blogging at Thursday Night Health Care.

Cross posted from The Liberal OC

I attended the amazing Faces of Fullerton event yesterday and learned about some of the great organizations that we have in Orange County.  My favorite was the YWCA booth where I took some time to speak with Diane Masseth-Jones who is the Executive Director of the North Orange County chapter of the YWCA.

The YWCA of North Orange County provides free early detection exams for women over forty who do not have health insurance. This is so very important since according to the American Cancer Society, those who are uninsured are more likely to be diagnosed in the later stages of cancer.

The breast cancer analysis showed that just 8% of women with private insurance had stage III or IV breast cancer at diagnosis, compared to 18% of uninsured women and 19% of women on Medicaid. Advanced stage disease was also more commonly diagnosed in African-American and Hispanic women compared to white women.

Cancer.org

"Everything's fine," McCain told reporters during a news conference. "Like most Americans, I go see my doctor fairly frequently."
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/...  

The McSame "Like most Americans, I go see my doctor fairly frequently", healthcare tour begins today at Miami Children's Hospital.

Mad as hell?  June 19, in S.F. fight back against AHIP and for-profit healthcare.

Here it is, directly from   ROBERT LASZEWSKI one of the most respected health policy analysts in the nation.

Wall Street finally seems to be figuring out that the health insurance business is, and has been for years, on a long walk off a short pier. What's sustainable about a business whose costs have continually exploded at 2-3 times the growth rate of the rest of the economy or the wage rate? Just where did Wall Street think this business was headed all those years the sector has been the darling of Wall Street?
http://healthpolicyandmarket.blogspo...

And here's where the fight to take back our healthcare system from the merchants of death will begin in earnest.

Mad as hell?  June 19, in S.F. fight back against AHIP and for-profit healthcare.