At the last meeting of the Linn County Democrats our chairman urged our guest speakers, Dr. Michael Huntington, MD and Dr. Norm Castillo, DO, to write a guest op ed piece to the Albany Democrat Herald (ADH). They agreed to do so. I thought you might want to see an early view of the article (attached). They also asked a previous speaker, Dr. Paul Hochfeld, MD. if he would be add a contribution to the article. We had Dr. Hochfeld as our guest speaker at our Health Care Forum that we sponsored in June.
The Letter:
Yes, there is a great deal of confusion regarding a single-payer plan and the public option, but let's be clear. One is a winner. The other is fatally flawed.
In the single-payer plan, a governmental or quasi-governmental agency becomes the administrator of a national health insurance, a pooled fund obtained by progressive taxes to pay for the health care needs of a single risk pool of all Americans. The original concept of insurance would be revived: using contributions from a very large risk pool to cover the medical costs of the few who are unlucky enough to get sick or injured. Everybody in. Nobody out.
Currently we have 1100 "private" insurance companies competing for profits primarily by limiting their risk pools to only healthy patients. This process results in small risk pools of people who will not cost insurance companies money. Those people who are excluded from insurance are relegated to haphazard and delayed health care. The result is often personal disaster and bankruptcy after a neglected illness becomes advanced and difficult to treat. Those who are able to buy insurance pay a hidden premium tax of 10% to cover the healthcare costs of those who are excluded from private insurance. The societal costs of our current for-profit non-system are staggering in terms of human suffering, financial hardship, and poor health for the populace and the work force.
What is the “public option”? The public plan option refers to a publicly owned and managed health insurance plan that would compete with private plans through an insurance exchange mechanism. An insurance exchange is intended to serve as an insurance shopping mall for policies and allow citizens to choose among many plans. The public option uses tax dollars and graduated subsidized premiums to pay for the health care needs of those Americans who are without insurance or are dissatisfied with their employer-based or individual insurance plans. Theoretically, a public plan would have no need for profits or advertising and would have such economies of buying power that its overhead would be very low. The public plan should therefore be able to out-compete the private plans and provide better service at lower cost.
But unfortunately, the public option will be swimming in shark-infested waters. The private health insurance companies are adept at avoiding risk. They stay in business by excluding customers who might cost them money and by denying services. They over-market the healthy and under-market the sick. They vigorously recruit the healthier clients found in employee groups and assiduously avoid the unemployed, poor, sick, and older Americans who then gravitate to the public plan. Furthermore the public plan will not have the advantages of a single-payer plan because it will remain part of a very fragmented health care system with its associated inefficiencies and administrative costs of 30%. The public plan will therefore become more costly than the private plans, will struggle, and in a few years fail. Opponents will then say, "See, your public plan failed and so will a single-payer plan!"
Members of Congress and the public are beginning to recognize that anything short of single-payer is fiscally irresponsible, unaffordable, and a bailout for the private health insurance industry. The Congressional Budget Office two weeks ago said that Congress's current proposal for healthcare reform HR 3200 will cost $1.3 trillion and leave millions of Americans uninsured. It may be for this reason that Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi last week agreed to allow Representative Weiner (D-NY) to introduce an amendment to HR 3200 (http://pubrecord.org/politics/3105/pelosi-allow-floor-single-payer/) which would basically replace the text of that bill with HR 676, the single-payer bill, which for several years has been sponsored by Rep. Conyers of Michigan. Just allowing that debate on the floor of the House would constitute a major victory for truth and the public, regardless of outcome.
All of us should call and e-mail our Representatives, Senators, and President daily to encourage them to proceed with the debate of single-payer healthcare in both houses of Congress.
Be well. To be otherwise is very expensive.
Mike Huntington MD
Norm Castillo DO
Paul Hochfeld MD
Thom Hartman was saying on this morning's show that the Dick Armey's group, FreedomWorks purpose is to disrupt all of the Town Hall meetings that are for Health Care Reform. They have produced a point by point strategy for these meetings. They are urged to show up and disperse widely among the crowd, giving the impression that the congress person's constituents are all incensed about the Democrat's socialized medicine bill.
See http://thinkprogress.org/2009/04/14/lobbying-clients-teaparties/
WE THE PEOPLE are at war, we are fighting the biggest battle since the war between the states, and this time the war is between the citizens of the great county and the big business that want to control them. Please consider this link below:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07312009/watch.html
Now let me introduce you to Senator Wyden of Oregon…
Sen. Wyden wants to mandate that we all buy insurance from the private market from the very companies you witnessed in the above video. Now it appears he is joining forces with them to try to scuttle health care reform. Private businesses are in the business to make money or they do not stay in business. Nonprofits insurers still have to compete with for-profit insurers and have fewer options for raising capital than companies that can sell shares to Wall Street. So, what you have is a stalemate and there are no incentives to share best business practices with an industry competitor…we are horribly inefficient and do not learn from the excellence of others. Back to Wyden, I just now watched on the news he also wants to decouple insurance from employers that provide those benefits. First, I am most definitely a single payer advocate. I know not all of you have employer benefits, but some of you have advocates within your HR departments when a claim is denied, your employer can call in your behalf, which carries more weight than a single subscriber does. The part of this that bothers me is the systematic method big business is using what we thought is our congressional representatives to do their bidding. Have you ever watched a BBQ with coals, they have a nice warm glow. Now take one of those coals away, what happens, the glow is less, the removed coal gets cold and turns black…that is exactly what is happening. It is not too late to have your voices heard, send a strong message to Sen. Wyden that we are watching, that he is out of touch with Oregonians and single payer is only the real option.
His office numbers are listed below.
DC - (202) 224-5244
Portland - (503) 326-7525
Eugene - (541) 431-0229
Salem - (503) 589-4555
Medford - (541) 858-5122
Bend - (541) 330-9142
La Grande - (541) 962-7691
Submitted for: Dr. Paul Hochfeld
Friend,
Oregon PHNP has a plan. The following letter is going out today to health care advocates and organizations around the country. If you know anybody, somewhere on the Northern Route from the Willamette Valley to D.C., who might be interested in helping us on the ground, please forward what follows to him/her. We’re really mad! Aren't you? Spending $1.6 million every day, The Health Care Industry has been blatantly manipulating public policy for profits. Despite the support of the majority of Americans and the efforts of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) and innumerable national organizations, Congress refuses to consider the only real solution: Single Payer Health Care. What’s missing? We need a rallying event that both national and local media can easily and eagerly embrace. Oregon PNHP has a plan. Enter: the Mad As Hell Doctors road tour.The vision. Imagine a small group of Oregon doctors leaving the Willamette Valley in a wrapped motor home, expressing our outrage at public rallies, making TV/radio appearances, hearing peoples’ stories, uploading video, attracting serious media attention, and pulling into D.C. with a caravan of cars to raise Hell with Congress. We will demand that they put Single Payer Health Care on the table for the Congressional Budget Office to evaluate it, and put it to a vote. If our road trip captures your imagination and you share our anger, we need your help, now. Our projected departure date is Sept. 8. Not only do we need funding, we need people to invite us to stop in his/her community and help us organize/publicize rallies and contact local media prior to our arrival. Time is of the essence.This is a serious effort. "We" have already put up $15,000 of our own money to cover the cost of phase one, which includes hiring Gary Jelinek (Dennis Kucinich's National 2004 Campaign Organizer) and Adam Klugman (creative media consultant). Phase two is the trip.Please donate your time and/or tax deductiblemoney. We can bring this vision to life. We can energize the Single Payer movement. Please pass this email on to all your friends and contacts who might be interested.To find out more and to support this effort, go to www.MadAsHellDoctors.com For questions email Gary Jelinek at garyjelinekdoctors@gmail.comBest regards and be well. Being otherwise is very expensive.Oregon PNHP: Dr. Samuel Metz (Anesthesiology) Dr. Joe Eusterman, (Retired Internal Medicine/Occupational Medicine) Dr. Eugene Uphoff, (Family Medicine) Dr. Paul Hochfeld, (Emergency Medicine, producer of "Health, Money and Fear") Dr. Mike Huntington, (Retired Radiation Oncology, co-convener Oregon PNHP)
I fear the the deck maybe stacking against President Obama.
Even with majority of 60 in the senate it will not matter big money does have their hands in the pockets of too many congressman. There is a vote in 2010 which we should also focus on that fact to get the right people in congress that will help President Obama achieve his goals which happen to be our goals on health care. I am sure the argument in this session of congress is going to be let's save what we have and keep the status quo or if there is a public option it will be shackled so the public option will be ineffective. We really need you your voices to be heard! In know in my head and feel in my heart that it is for the best interest of the American People to insist on Health Care Reform that would include or be a single payer system. The alternative is the private, fragmented, investor-owned health care system where profits are the first priority. It does not really matter why we have the worst health care in the developed world, and we are crippling our people and our manufacturing segments, especially the small business segments, due to these costs...most do not see this. No other capitalist country on this planet treats health care as a commodity. It is amazing we all started this health care reform campaign at the request of President Obama and the things we learn on the way kind of empowers us, but we have a long way to go to empower the rest of this nation's people. We need a green field approach not a band-aid on the current system that allows the American people to be treated as a commodity. It is not too late to write your own story online: http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/healthcarestory Your Senators: Sen. Jeffery A. Merkley (DEM) District: 0S2 United States Senate 107 Russell Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510 Phone: (202) 224-3753 Fax: (202) 228-3997 WebSite: http://merkley.senate.gov/ E-Mail: http://merkley.senate.gov/contact/ Sen. Ron Wyden (DEM) District: 0S1 United States Senate 223 Dirksen Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510-0001 Phone: (202) 224-5244 Fax: (202) 228-2717 WebSite: http://wyden.senate.gov E-Mail: http://wyden.senate.gov/contact/ Peace be with you, Ed
Just keeping you all informed of the progress of lack of on our OFA project, "Made in Linn County"
The buy local and community service project, "Made in Linn County" is moving forward again.
We have a grant writer, Toni Reynolds who moved recently from Maryland and is a strong Barack Obama support. We have a Lawyer that will help up with forming a non-profit group. The decision to go non-profit we believe will open many doors for us.
In the beginning, we were overly sensitive to those around us which caused delays. These delays caused us to ask questions about our mission and it helped remind us where we want to go with this project. Loyd and I have pondered this deeply and we cannot be all things to all people. Of course we will try to be all things while we remain focused on our goals of community service. We wish to educate and awaken the conscience of the people of the benefits of buying local and helping our local economy, but more than that, we want to create a sense of community. I have a cassette tape from Dennis Waitley, LOL, now I am dating myself, anyway, Dennis said, " Courage means to keep working a relationship, to continue seeking solutions to difficult problems, and to stay focused during stressful periods." Do we have courage, I not sure how one defines that but we do need to remain focused on our mission. Our mission, we will be changing our mission statement within the next week to recognize our neighbors. Although we will have the boundaries of Made in Linn County to remain unique and somewhat identifiable, we are also going to recognize and support our neighbors.
We had a get together meeting last night for OFA in Albany. Our circle is relatively small but expanding. Afterall, Rome was not built in a day, but with each new active participant, one's effort is multiplied. Our next OFA project will be to divide the name and phone numbers I have of people that volunteered during the last election campaign and divide them up in groups of forty. These volunteers have volunteered in the past once so the list is a filtered list in that sense. We are going to call those volunteers and ask them if they would like to get regular OFA updates and request their emails...our lists are basically names and phone numbers. Those who wish to keep their emails private we will be asking them if the would like to be part of a phone tree and call five other people for OFA events. I will be creating a form to assist us when we call for our circle to approve. We should be start calling within a week or two and have a new list of those who wish to be active.
Regards,
Ed
Yes Made in Linn County is still alive. We are meeting again on the 27th of this month. We had some curve balls thrown our way in illness and also people's schedules. Plus, the Linn County Democrat Headquarter will probably need to move to make way for a barber shop. Loyd Henion and I will be getting together for lunch tomorrow and will be discussing both topics. We have some community merchants to discuss our plans and hopefully we will make those contacts before the 27th. We will have an agenda by the 27th as we get some more diesel in this train! One of our objectives will to assign task and report on those results. We started out this project this way, but I got sick and basically missed our last meeting, other than a token drop by. My wife had contacted some flesh eating bacteria and needed my attention, but all is well and tomorrow night I will be writing a new update and hopefully by Tuesday night I will send emails to those who were present in our organizing meeting over a month ago. Weds, Thurs, and Friday I will be training in Portland on a new ARC Flash Software for work.
Catching up, looks like the weekend will be busy!
Ed :-)
It is an awesome day in Oregon today. The canvassing was slow today, but we had short notice. It would have been nice if in the beginning we were give 3-4 weeks to organizing an effective pledge project canvas activity, but it is what it is...
Whelp, I was taught many years ago that you have controllables and uncontrollables. You cannot do anything intitally about the uncontrollables for they are out of your hands, so one must focus on what they can control or make an impact. A very exciting thing happened today to me...more than I can express in writing. I found several people that understood the problem in Albany and are excited about helping OFA to be successful whenever they can. One young man was going to drop everything and start canvassing his neighborhood right at the moment. I told him I wish we could have connected a couple of weeks ago! Gosh, this really, really picked me up emotionally...I was on autopilot gathering pledges. I am not a big baby, but I like company and team work. Don't every sell short a single act of kindness or what another's enthusiasm can bring to the table--yee haw. Good things come to those who are patient.
To make a long story short, if we cannot control the short notices, then we need to adapt. Here in Albany were are going to organize a rapid response team for OFA activities. All of us have strengths and weakness which can include available time for one project or another. We are going to identify in this organizational meeting what resources are available so we can work seamlessly on projects. If we have a flat we will have a spare to continue on our projects to be effective--we will also create a hotline among ourselves.
We are meeting at Ed and Paula's house and we will report back on how this all turns out but Ed is excited and back baby. Yes We Can!
Peace!
We had our "Made in Linn County" organizational meeting Wednesday night.
We anticipated that those who may have been working on their own projects for organizing small businesses would feel threatened, that was not our mission or intention. A point to consider is the community at large has never heard of these groups. They presented their philosophy as that of a web and they were networking together, which is a good thing for them. Our intention was transparency, we were a group of the community and for the community, and we embrace their hard work…I am not saying their effort was not for the community by all means, it just was not being presented that way at this point. Some of theses people are just trying to survive in this business climate. There were lessons and positives from the meeting. One important positive was those who felt threaten in the beginning, felt much less threaten by the end of the meeting...we need allies not enemies.
The good new is the "Made in Linn County" organization has caught the attention of many. Hopefully we continue down that path. One of the missons of Made in Linn County is one of keeping dollars recycling in the local community. Our mission is not to promote any one person or business financially. It is about the health of a community. For an example, let us say you have a community of 20,000 families that spend $150.00 during a holiday season, that is not unreasonable, right? You take 20,000 families at $150.00 and that becomes 3 million dollars of stimulus money for that community. The bonus, according to the American Business Alliance and others, is when you spend the dollar locally on products made locally using local labor; you can multiply the effect of that dollar spent by a factor of three. Therefore, what this means it would take 9 million dollars of stimulus money injected in the community to get the same affect to the bottom line of the people in that community if the products were imported and sold by large non-local chain stores.
There is another bonus of having a business alliance and that is the size of your footprint. United businesses could get involved with the local government and could have the same consideration of bending policy. Maybe the same consideration of a K-Mart or some similar entity. Small businesses are closer to the pulse of the community and their input is worth consideration, but if these small businesses are strung out on a string, they have smaller footprints than an alliance and most of the small businesses do not have time to attend local economic developmental meeting. They are just trying to survive and their time is everything. When you have an Alliance, you can have a task group can decided upon to represent the whole.
There is also the environmental impact of buying local. You do not have transportation costs in both machines and fuel. I read recently that it takes about 80 calories of energy for every one calorie in a Tomato grown in Peru to make it into your salad at the dinner table. We are not being good stewards of this planet of ours,,,but I totally understand that most small businesses are just worried about making it from one season to the next. I just thought it would be worth mentioning.
The Albany as industrialized as it is have many people that want to make a difference to the local economy, jobs, and the environment. I believe that we in Linn and our sibling Benton County can be the mustard seed for change in Oregon.
Time to go to work and then a panic planning for the canvassing tomorrow, I have had divided attention this time around. For those who pray, I can use a prayer, but not for me…for the cause that change begins in each of us and then spreads. I am sure there are people out there much more talented then myself and we need their help.
Peace :-)
This is an email I sent out, so instead of writing it over I am pasting it here...hope that is ok :-)
This canvassing has come at a very busy time for me. Loyd and I have been working hard in making our project for "madeinlinncounty.org" a successful one. As the OFA representative for the Linn County Democrats, I have been called to support the president in another project and these two projects are overlapping in my time and energy. I also work at a job too that is demanding to bring home the bacon. I will be making calls to former volunteers from the presidential campaign and quess what, we are hosting this project!
All of us spend a lot of time electing a President to the White House in Washington to work for us. We achieved that, but our journey continues. I am asking you to help me pledge support for our president this coming Saturday, March 21 by canvassing the Albany area. You as Democrats in Linn or Benton County who were not part of the “Obama People” as it is has been called, have an opportunity unite with us to be one people because we are one people. There are no secrets, and I have always tried to be transparent to all of you. Good gravy, I have even share with you my strengths and weaknesses (writing is one of them). Therefore, if you can make the time we will be meeting at the Two Rivers Market area at 12:00 noon next to the Linn County Democrat’s Office. There will be a brief training and a video. This time I will let the pairs of you select on a map, which are you area canvassing, and if you have a cell phone please bring it so we can keep track of everyone. The plan is to have an introduction, canvas for three hours and then a follow-up. If you cannot canvas that long it is ok, we still need you and together we show our support for our elected president.
I am sorry my communication has been spotty lately. My wireless connection is not working for my laptop and the only other communication I have, when I am not home, is my iPhone. I do have big clumsy fingers so trying to write emails is laborious with my iPhone:-) I will have solutions for these problems relatively soon...umm, problems with the internet connection, not my clumsy fingers :-)
Thank You,
Ed Ebbs
PS - If someone can help be make calls this week still, call me at (541) 570-2976 :-)
PPS - Made some edits...sorry, there are more errors out of time to fix them all without re-writing the whole thing!!
