First the shout outs: Dick Howe, BMG, Lowell Sun, Left in Lowell, and little ole me have all written about the continuing saga of the MA-05 candidates and the sticky thicket that is the subject of healthcare.
The Lowell Sun has a great article that does a good job is drilling down on where the candidates are on this issues.
Jamie Eldridge, as usual has a very clear stand on healthcare. He’s for single payer universal healthcare — now. None of this let the market decide nonsense:
“The notion that the marketplace would fix this, or that we need to experiment at the state level, doesn’t work,” Eldridge said. “Massachusetts passed its law last year, and it’s not covering everyone. There are too many people who can’t afford the premiums or the high deductibles. The only solution is universal, single-payer health care across the country.”
Can I get an amen? Or at least a hell, yeah!
Dick Howe sums up the other candidates views nicely:
The Sun story also interviews the other Congressional candidates – Donoghue, Finegold and Miceli – who say change is needed by won’t go as far as Eldridge, preferring to wait and see how the new Massachusetts model of health care access works before expanding it into a national program.
I also got a sense of a wait and see attitude from the other MA-05 candidates, but jeez, really? Wait and see? It’s easy for folks who have health insurance to say wait and see. How about the millions of folks who can’t wait any longer? I’m no health care expert, but it doesn’t take a think tank to figure out that these folks are costing the system more money by not having access to preventative care.
I love this bit by Eileen Donoghue in the Sun article:
Donoghue, who sits on the board of directors at Saints Medical Center in Lowell, said a single-payer system “in a perfect world, might be a nice option.”
But she said government health-care programs are too overrun by bureaucracy and poor management to expect a smooth expansion to universal health coverage.
File that one under: “Uh, hello Pot? This is kettle.” For-profit health care organizations are not overrun by bureaucracy, not to mention poor management? Since when? And why are we taking the word of candidates who clearly have a conflict of interest? It’s not hard to understand that candidates who have a financial interest (I’m assuming you get paid for sitting on the Board of Fallon or Saints Memorial Hospital) in keeping private insurance companies’ tentacles in the money till will not be too jazzed to get rid of the goose that lays the golden eggs.
Mrs Tsongas points to Governor Patrick’s support for the current MA health care plan as a reason to not fix what, (paraphrasing) ain’t broken. Lynne reminds us that Governor Patrick isn’t exactly impressed with the current state of MA healthcare:
{Update: Regarding this phrase from Tsongas - “…Massachusetts Universal Health Care Plan, which was supported by Deval Patrick when he was a candidate for Governor and that he continues to strongly support today” - Patrick always spoke of it with serious caveats. He supported the plan as a first step. He also talked about its major flaws and gaps, too. I wouldn’t quite say that’s a ringing endorsement of the MA plan.]
An editorial in the Chicago Sun-Times dated April 30 breaks it down:
In Massachusetts, the first state to experiment with such a scheme, a 56-year-old making $30,000 annually will have to spend $7,164 in premium and deductible payments before insurance kicks in, and still pony up 20 percent of hospital costs after that.
If you have time read the rest of that article. It has a very compelling argument for universal, single payer healthcare. Okay, here’s a little bit more:
Every other developed nation has some form of public health insurance, yet most spend less than half per person than we do. Nearly a third of our $2.3 trillion in health spending this year will go for administration. In their drive to enroll healthy (and therefore profitable) patients and screen out the sick, private insurers waste vast sums on marketing, billing, underwriting, utilization review and other activities that enhance profits but divert resources from care. The paperwork they inflict on doctors and hospitals costs hundreds of billions more each year. In contrast to the roughly 20 percent overhead of insurance companies, Canada’s single-payer program runs for 1 percent overhead. And Canada’s hospitals and doctors face little paperwork burden.
Jamie Eldridge has this exactly right. Single payer, universal healthcare — now.
Filed under: 5th Congressional Race, Jamie Eldridge, Niki Tsongas, Eileen Donoghue, Barry Finegold | No Comments »
