We asked some leading thinkers in California to begin this online conversation about covering the uninsured by considering the following questions:
Should all Americans be required to purchase health insurance? What options for coverage should the uninsured and under-insured have, and how do you assess when coverage is affordable?
Posts
Reflections on Last Week’s Health Dialogues
I hope that as many people as possible were able to listen to the June broadcast of Health Dialogues, in which I had the privilege of discussing health reform with Dr. Toni Yancey of UCLA and Dr. Tony Iton, Director of the Alameda County Public Health Department. These two public health professionals and I had very different views of who should be responsible for improving our health…
Why the White House Opposes Single Payer, and What You Can Do About It
If you were puzzled that none other than Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius made the clearest point thus far that President Obama does not support single payer, you are not alone…
Focusing the Health Care Debate on California
Californians should not just prevent steps backward; we should take some steps forward at the state level. State-level bills on comprehensive health reform have stalled for the year, as legislators focus on the budget crisis. But there’s still progress on specific health reform on a policy level…
The Most Dangerous Thing in American Health Care is Barack Obama Carrying the Dartmouth Atlas
If President Obama believes that he’s got enough charm to convince Miami’s seniors that Medicare is going to cut back their access to care by 30 percent (sorry, we’ve already done all the coronary artery bypass grafts allocated to this ZIP code for this year), then he’s got political guts – that’s for sure…
Now’s The Time to Tell Washington What You Want
While it’s fun debating what might be an ideal health care system, the more relevant question over the next few weeks and months is: what kind of health reform legislation can get through Congress, and how can California consumers and patients impact the outcome? We’ve discussed the framework that Congressional leaders are starting with [...]
Why No Health Tax Reform? A Conservative’s Inside View
I doubt that the Democrats’ tax reform will end up giving more dollars to American families to buy health insurance of their choice. Instead, it will give more money to the government to give us health insurance that it chooses. The idea of giving people, instead of corporations, tax benefits for buying health insurance has been around for a while in “conservative” circles. Within the self-styled conservative movement, however, it has not yet succeeded in gaining full acceptance for three key reasons…
What About The Affordability Of Mandated Private Employment Based Coverage?
The difficulty with SB 2 and some other versions of “pay or play” for lower income working families and employers of all sizes with low wage workers is that family coverage costs nearly three times as much as employee-only coverage. So, if employee only coverage is $4,000, then coverage for all family members is $12,000…
Yes, I Do Have a Nerve
I’ll be happy to enter into a “compact” with Mr. Wright (and everybody else): if he’ll ask the government to return the share of my paycheck that it has taken for Medicare, which his parents use, then I’ll ask the government to return the share of Mr. Wright’s paycheck that it has taken for Medicare, which my parents use. That’s cutting out the middleman!
Don’t Forget Benefits When Looking at Costs
We all have preferred solutions to the health crisis, and so while I would agree with Claudia Chaufan for single-payer as my preference, I disagree that anything else is not worthy of consideration. After all, there literally are as many types of universal health coverage plans as there are countries in Europe…
Today’s “Public Options” Are Already Bankrupt
The only reason Medicare “works” is because of a continuous bailout from non-beneficiaries (including generations yet unborn) to beneficiaries. Its ability to execute this fiscal raid shrinks dramatically once the state enlists every citizen as a potential “beneficiary.” The result is denial of care…