Join us at our monthly meeting! This month, we are planning on two big events, one a teach-in and the other a celebration of Medicare’s birthday. Stay tuned for more details.
All meetings will take place on the second Tuesday of the month at Access Living, third floor, as usual. Any other meetings needed before that will be called on an ad hoc/as-needed basis.
See all of you Tuesday, September 13!
PPACA (The Patient Protection and Afforadable Care Act), Obama and company’s much-heralded health care “reform,” is now more than a year old. Many are having to squint to see the real difference it has made in delivering on its promises.
The expansion of Medicaid is one such promise. It sounds good, but if you look at the quality of care delivered, it’s quite a bit less than meets the eye. Many states are slashing funds for Medicaid even as it becomes the only insurance option a large number of people. Seeing the issue through the experience of a woman caught in the cracks of various low-income solutions, ChiSPAN member Helen Redmond writes:
States seeking to cut costs are also privatizing Medicaid by forcing recipients into managed care HMOs. In Illinois, Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn wants to transfer half of beneficiaries into plans run by Aetna and Centene–even though managed care HMOs have a notorious track record of restricting access to care.
There is also the acute analysis over at of the Economist, which warns of a tsunami of costs associated with the PPACA, noting that the reform “add[s] millions of people to an unsupportably expensive system. Analysts estimate that America’s health spending will continue to soar under the reforms.”
Facing significant obstacles from the Obama administration and big business, Vermont is nevertheless forging ahead with its plan for universal, single-payer health care. Not many are surprised that a publicly funded plan financed by payroll taxes would cause controversy, but it alarms many that Democrats on the national level would abandon support for it? Still, the moment has arrived for a state-by-state strategy for arriving at single-payer. Here is a great report on the stakes involved and how the issue has been evolving, from The Nation.
Meanwhile, here is yet another dismaying report on how health care costs in Massachusetts siphon off funds that would otherwise go to luxuries like, say, education. Remember Massachusetts? Here’s a reminder: the state that was the model for out national “reform.” Onward!