In the words of President Obama (as contained in the fund raising email that hit my inbox a scant 1 hour and 24 minutes after the event),

“This evening, at 11:15 p.m., the House of Representatives voted to pass their health insurance reform bill. Despite countless attempts over nearly a century, no chamber of Congress has ever before passed comprehensive health reform. This is history.”

History indeed, and it was passed with 39 Democratic defections and only 1 Republican – Anh Cao, of Louisiana – the man who replaced William “I left hid the money in the freezer” Jefferson.

Congratulations are in order but don’t celebrate too soon. The fight now moves to the Senate where I am certain things will only get more complicated.

No, not f0r the hell of it but rather because it simply made sense. Good job BC.

The British Columbia government started delivering an antiviral drug from its stockpile on Thursday to those who need it at no cost.

Taking Tamiflu within the first 24 hours of becoming ill will lessen flu symptoms, reduce the risk of transmission and, most importantly to public health officials, decrease the risk of complications such as respiratory failure.

B.C. saw its million-dose stockpile of Tamiflu was approaching expiry and decided to put it to use at pharmacies, said Dr. Perry Kendall, the provincial health officer.

“We don’t want people taking it for a cold or for allergies and we don’t want people just just filling it and keeping it in their fridge on the off chance,” Kendall said. “Otherwise, there’s going be an awful lot of wasted drugs.”

The free Tamiflu is meant for pregnant women and people who have underlying medical conditions. A course of treatment normally costs about $50.

The other day I wrote a piece detailing one Congressman’s opinion about heath care reform and the public option. Today I found this excellent breakdown of the current White House position on passing health care reform by the always prescient Pennsylvanian, BooMan. The crux of his argument is that things are unfolding just as planned. Pass something with a public option in the House. Something without in the Senate. Reconcile later.

So, of course, the way to make this bag of shit smell better is to offer people the option of buying their health insurance from the government. Yeah, maybe you are only going to give that option to the self-employed, uninsured, and impoverished, but it’s a far-sight better than just compelling people to become customers of the very corporations they hate the most.

Even before Obama took office he started canvassing the Senate to see what kind of support there was for his health care plan. He quickly discovered that there was no Republican support for the plan he ran on. He also discovered two disconcerting things about the Democratic caucus. They were more favorably disposed to Clinton’s mandate than his own plan, and there were a few Dems who opposed the public option.

He realized that he probably wouldn’t have 60 Democratic votes in the caucus (Kennedy and Byrd were ill, Specter was still a Republican, and Franken’s election was tied up in the courts). Therefore, he made sure to get a provision included in the budget that would allow him to come back in late October and pass a bill using the budget reconciliation process (which only requires 51 votes). [emphasis mine] But he knew he couldn’t announce that he was going to go that route without giving an honest effort to pass the legislation under regular order. Even if it was a pipe dream, he had to try to win over a few Republicans.

I recommend you read the entire piece as it presents a very well constructed argument and should make many people who are otherwise freaking out over the process calm down just a bit. I would also like to point out that the immediate reaction in the comments section was exactly what I expected. The first response was that without a public option health care reform is meaningless.

Personally I do not believe this to be the case at all. We need to understand that our health care system is severely damaged. Think of it as a high priced German sports car that has gone without service for 300,000 miles. You are likely to have issues with the transmission, the engine, tires, suspension, brakes, electrical, etc. Each of those systems require an overhaul but right now we simply want to get the damned thing into the garage and start working on it.

So far, Obama is the first mechanic to actually give us an estimate worth entertaining. Oh, by the way, he will get the thing running and maybe replace the tires and brakes. For the rest? Well, start saving up baby, this is a ten year project.

It looks like Dr. Evil is in charge of the pricing scheme for drugs we get in hospitals which, when taken at home, would be cheaper.  Much, ahem, cheaper:

Medicare and supplemental insurance covered most of the costs, but there was still a bill of $730. Charges for what the hospital calls “self-administered drugs” – drugs that Bujalski takes regularly at home.

“What I found out is that $730 plus a few pennies normally cost me under $30,” Buljalski said.

He did a cost comparison. St. Anthony’s Central charged him about $497 for two tablets of Plavix, a drug Buljalski usually pays 8 dollars for. A Crestor tablet cost $65 in the hospital, at home he pays about $3 for it.

The article notes that Mr. Buljalski’s total bill, for a one day hospital stay, topped out over $58,000.  Luckily he had insurance to cover most of those costs.  The article goes on to note that the medications — which weren’t covered by insurance — had an astronomical “3,495-percent mark-up.”  If hospitals are overcharging by the thousands of percentage points for medications, you wondering how much else of Mr. Buljalski’s $58,000 bill for one day was similarly overcharged.

Look, there’s a huge debate over the government’s role in health care right now, but there needs to be some things the left and right can both agree on — and lowering these outrageous hospital costs should be one of those things.  The cost of health care in the United States as a percentage of our GDP is nearly 16%. In Canada, the same figure is a little above 10%; in Britain it’s on the low side of 8% — and those countries cover every citizen.  In fact, out of the industrialized world, America’s health care to GDP ratio is the highest.  And when it costs a middle class worker’s yearly wage to spend one day in the hospital — one day — we see why American health care is so expensive.  These ridiculous hospital costs are going to bankrupt us.  Something has to be done to reign these charges in and make health care affordable for all.

If the left and right can’t agree on this, then political course in this country has retarded further than I thought.

Insurance industry lobbyists have crushed them, every one.

But seriously, folks… Glenn Thrush asks an excellent question: Where is the alternative health care reform bill that Republican leaders promised they would have for Democrats…. 100 days ago?

As I alluded to in this post on Tuesday, I participated in a conference call between the Canadian membership of Democrats Abroad and Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich on the topic of health care reform. The reason for my participation is simple. I am an American citizen working for an American corporation but living in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

When I was offered the opportunity to relocate from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Vancouver, British Columbia I did as any other person would do, I consulted my wife and together we listed out all of the pro’s, con’s, opportunities and risks surrounding this potential move. Uprooting a young family is not something that should be taken lightly no matter how lucrative the opportunity may seem. In the end, one of the items that helped tip the scales in favor of relocation was Canada’s single payer health care system.

Now, I can already hear the angry mobs amassing at the comment section ready to shout their uninformed drivel about how awful the Canadian health care system is, how people are dying in the street waiting for services, and how such a horrific socialist system would never work in the U.S. To that let me just say one thing. Bullshit.

It has been nearly two years since I took my family to Canada and so far our experience with the health care system is quite the opposite. But that is not why I am writing today so rather than spend too much time here talking about it I promise another post (or series) on the topic at a later date.

Back to the topic at hand. So Tuesday I participated in this con call with Rep. Kucinich fully expecting to be on the receiving end of another one of those political action speeches where the politician shows up and rally’s the troops to whatever end he/she has in mind. Instead, I was greeted by an open line conference call where all participants introduced themselves and each had an opportunity to ask a question of the Representative. Refreshing to say the least.

My question was simple, after having watched both House Oversight Committee hearings on health care reform lead by the congressman I asked him this:

“During the hearings you stated that your bill (HR676) was likely DOA. Can you explain why? What is preventing our representatives from actually acting in the interest of their constituency.”

His answer was not at all what I expected. He lead by defending his effort. “First let me point out that hr676 has 70 co-sponsors in the house of representatives” which I agree nothing to sneeze at. But then came the message that Kucinich had decided he wanted to carry to this group of American expats,

“In 2000 I tried to bring a bill and was asked by the head of the Gore campaign not to bring it because of the funding they were receiving [from the health care industry].

In 2008 I was excluded from debates that were sponsored by health insurance companies. It is a huge business and they are determined not to let go of it. They use their influence to buy their way through. Even a weak public option is not going to get through this congress.”

And he did not end with that. In answer after answer to each question posed by the group he hammered home two distinct messages. 1) In this congress the public option is dead and 2) a public option will eventually prevail but it will be a decade long struggle.

When questioned about whether the blue-dog Democrats were in effect siding with the Republicans and/or the health care industry Kucinich said,

“It’s my opinion that the blue dogs are doing exactly what the white house wants them to do. The public option was a trial balloon. I can not stress how cynical and brutal the politics are. This is not about the public option. Anyone looking for the public option needs to look someplace else. It is not going to happen and anybody who says it is is in fantasy land.”

When asked about what can be done for American health care reform Kucinich took the position of  man with a deeper understanding of the true struggle,

“We have to take a long term perspective on this. 8-10 years down the road. This is a civil rights movement we have here. I think we are going to have single payer in the states one day. Unfortunately there are going to be many people who get sick, go broke and die before we get there.”

What Kucinich was doing was resetting expectations and delivering a hard message to the majority of Americans that support a public option today.

He was saying do not expect a public option any time soon. Whatever might get through this congress masquerading as a public option will not be worth much. And if a public option is ever to pass on a national level it will likely come only after a groundswell of grassroots effort. Reset your clocks for a long term fight. Work with local organizations such as the one being lead by Chuck Pennacchio in Pennsylvania with HealthCare4AllPA.

I am sitting on a conference call with the folks from Democrats Abroad Canada awaiting the arrival of Congressman Dennis Kucinich. I plan to provide an update later but in the meantime I ask that you pay a visit to the website Health Care Stories from American’s In Canada to see some highly relevant health care stories.

Come back to this post later for an update.

First off, I can’t put into words how pleased I am to see Dennis Kucinich swearing in the group testifying before this committee. The Bush era practice of not requiring people to swear in was simply reprehensible.

Second, this hearing is a MUST SEE for any person serious about understanding the debate around heath care reform in the United States. I know this is not the “sexy” hearing. That one is scheduled for tomorrow when the sitting executives from America’s top insurance companies will get grilled under the lights and likely say nothing of substance. No, this is the hearing where real Americans tell the stories of their lost loved ones who died as a result of intentional corporate malfeasance. This is the hearing where the ex-executives – no longer fearful of repercussions – testify about the practices of true corporate bureaucrats charged with denying coverage to these real Americans, sentencing them to death.

This hearing is pure gold. I urge you to watch it in it’s entirety. If you can’t seem to bring yourself to do so your comments will receive the same treatment.

This is serious stuff in need of serious review.

Arguably the most relevant bit of data in the health care debate was presented today by the Kaiser Family Foundation…Simple Arithmetic.

This week we put out our annual benchmark survey of employer health coverage and costs. Two numbers jumped off the pages.

The first number was the average cost of a family health insurance policy in 2009: $13,375. To put that number in context, if you are an employer, you can hire an employee at the minimum wage for about $15,000 per year. If you are a consumer, you can rent an average two-bedroom apartment nationwide for $11,136 per year (though it is quite a bit more here in Menlo Park, California where our Foundation is based). You can also buy a new Chevy Aveo for $12,000, and it gets 35 miles per gallon on the highway.

The other result that jumped off the page was the stark contrast between increases in health insurance premiums and overall inflation in the general economy. Premiums went up 5% and prices overall fell 0.7% (mainly driven by a big drop-off in energy prices).

Hat tip to memeorandum.

He does it as only he could, weaving his complex and compelling personal story into a clear picture of what is right and what is wrong with the U.S. health care system.

There are many valid criticisms to be made of American healthcare, but let me tell a story that helps explain its strengths. Only 15 years ago, the retrovirus, HIV, was killing thousands in America — six times as many young Americans have died of Aids as died in Vietnam — and researchers had never found a way to stop such a sophisticated and constantly evolving organism from burying itself in people’s immune systems and slowly destroying them. I was told in 1993 that I had a few years to live. I write this 16 years later with a stronger immune system than I have ever measured before.

America’s much-maligned healthcare system did this. Without this vast and free market in medical care and pharmaceuticals, without the potential for making large amounts of money from affluent and insured patients, the innovation of treatments and regimens would never have occurred at the pace it did. Yes, publicly funded research was also vital — but it is rightly restricted to basic science, not finessing drugs for humans. Now we have dozens of anti-HIV drugs, from several private companies, competing with each other, and my life is saved. How do I put a price on that?

It would appear that Olympia Snowe, the sole remaining “moderate” Republican the Democrats in Congress can look to for political cover in this health care reform initiative, has made it clear she wants all likelihood of a “public option” off the table.

President Barack Obama “should take it off the table,” said Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “It would give real momentum to building consensus.”

Not only is this not at all surprising – who really thought vesting the success of health care reform in a Republican, no matter how moderate, was a good idea – but more importantly who really cares?

Olympia Snowe doesn’t want a public option and that matters exactly why? The Democrats and Obama do not need one single Republican vote for any version of health care to pass. For that matter, they could make it illegal for private insurance companies to be involved in the delivery of health care all together. They have enough seats. Of course no one, not even the most free-sex having, drug legalizing, abortion loving, capitalism hating liberal is asking for this but you would never know it from the state of this debate would you?

This is because the term “public option” has been allowed to float about without any meaningful qualification so that it is quickly attaining the same status as the term “liberal” itself. Congratulations Patrick. It is the boogieman of the health care debate and as such people who have absolutely no clue what it is are running down the streets with pitch forks and torches ready to kill the bastard the first chance they get.

So what exactly is the public option anyway? Is it government run health care? No, that is called single-payer health care. This would be something similar to the fear inducing Canadian system I have been living happily under for nearly the past two years. You know the one, where life is so miserable that when you get sick you go to the doctor and get treated for…wait for it…free! Oh, how horrible. What a screwed up socialist idea eh? Anyway, fear not America this is not on the table.

The public option is, in one word, choice.

God forbid!

Yes people, the public option is the idea that you, the American people, would have the choice as to whether to use your employer based care, private care, no care, or a government-employee-medicare-like option.

There you have it. Olympia Snowe is refusing to support a bill that would give Americans a choice and to that I say so the hell what! Why should we care what Olympia Snowe things, as a United States Senator she already gets the public option today doesn’t she!?!

===

UPDATE: John Amato has the goods showing President Obama has not given up.

Upon reading his latest public statement on health reform legislation,  it seems all-too-apparent that co-op-luvvin’ DINO Sen. Kent Conrad, one of 6 senators inexplicably tasked with determining the fate of US health insurance,  has officially lost the plot, as publius notes:

When law students learn about murder, they learn that you generally need to kill knowingly — that is, the prosecution must show that the defendant actually intended to kill the victim.

In some cases, however, a defendant can be so utterly reckless that he is assumed to have knowledge.  For instance, if I drive drunk really fast down a crowded street, I might not have knowingly tried to kill someone.  But because I was so knowingly reckless — so oblivious to the obvious risks — I could still be charged.

That’s basically what Conrad is doing.  If he’s not knowingly trying to kill reform, he’s acting with such an extreme recklessness that we might as well assume that he is.

Really hope someone opens up a can of primary whoop-ass on Conrad. The tiresome Lieberman 2.0 “centrist” posturing has gone too far this time. There must be consequences for blatantly pulling a hit on the public option at the apparent behest of his loyal patrons in the health insurance lobby (and, perhaps, the White House).

Some things are more important than Pollyannishly striving to achieve a hollow bipartisan consensus for its own sake (that leaden thud you heard was David Broder’s wrinkled carcass hitting a real American’s kitchen floor. Don’t worry, he’ll be fine. He has great health insurance.)

La Shawn Barber thinks Jeffrey Goldberg is “a liberal blogger.”

Sigh.

La Shawn also wants us to know she is not an appeaser:

(Detractors who called my Tiller post “gloating,” “twisted,” and “hateful” did so because I reminded readers that he killed infants for a living and because I didn’t publicly condemn Tiller’s murder. Unnecessary, as I condemn all acts of murder, especially murder of the unborn. I have no desire to appease anyone, especially people who think women have a right to slaughter babies in the womb. Take note that I haven’t publicly condemned the recruiter’s murder, either. Consequently, I’ll patiently await follow-up posts from liberal/pro-death bloggers declaring this post to be “gloating,” “twisted,” and “hateful” as well.)

Okay, I can see that La Shawn is extremely upset, and thus I would like to offer her reassurance on at least two points.

First, in this instance La Shawn’s patience will be rewarded: I can tell her, with complete and unalloyed sincerity and honesty, that her post today is just as gloating, twisted, and hateful as the post she wrote yesterday. I don’t think any reasonable, fair person could deny her that honor.

And second, I share La Shawn’s disinclination to appease anyone — especially people who think either women or men have the right to accuse any woman  of “slaughtering her baby in the womb” because, when faced with choices that are (a) heartbreaking, and (b) known only to that woman and her family, she chooses abortion.

Sarah posted this at her other pad, and I thought I’d do the same here:

As a Canadian for whom universal single-payer coverage is a given, health care is a big one for me. The fact that my American friends have to go through such fucking bullshit regarding their fucking HEALTH CARE? That is on the same level of debasement as the death penalty. Bottom fucking line: No nation with the resources of the United States of America should have even 1 person without health care coverage, let alone 44 million.

More info on Ask The President @ Alterdestiny.