“Busting the Health Care Trusts, One Way or Another - Huffingtonpost.com” plus 4 more

Busting the Health Care Trusts, One Way or Another - Huffingtonpost.com
Mother's devotion to kids recalled - Honolulu Advertiser
Mulberry Restoring Baby Hospital - Southwest Times Record
HAND: When crazy was common - Sun Chronicle
Chimp-ly irresistible - New York Post

Busting the Health Care Trusts, One Way or Another - Huffingtonpost.com

Posted: 08 Sep 2009 11:05 AM PDT

The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 was authored by John Sherman of Ohio, a Republican. The act is said to have been modeled to prohibit the specific practice of separate business entities influencing the activities of other businesses through investments in those businesses. The investments were assured by collusion between the managing bodies, boards, of companies, hence the term trust. The motivation for the law was that anticompetitive advantages accrued to businesses through this influence. And to the extent this influence limited competition and rigged prices, it did harm to the public. The Act was passed with an almost perfect unanimity of both Houses.

Teddy Roosevelt used the Act to break up 40 trust/monopolies in his term. William Howard Taft broke up 90. Both were Republicans, and it may seem a bit out of character for the party of enormous businesses to have done this, but then Republicans were, at one time, more sensible. The party, as it is now constituted, is little more than a front for criminal enterprises, if you consider monopolistic practices to be in any sense unlawful.

What is surprising is that, given the glaring evidence of just the disparities between other countries and ours in health care costs, that investigation into anti-competitive activities by the health care industry have not been more common, much less on the lips of every American. In particular, the classic "trust" style of monopoly that may exist between insurer and provider has received little attention at all. The FTC has had some successes with regional price manipulations and pharmaceuticals. One of the problems facing the FTC is that it has no authority over non-profit concerns, providers in many cases, or health insurers, concerns that then may skirt antitrust law. California has had some investigations too, by the Controller's office, but they have been largely dropped from the agenda and even their website. Much concern is out there as in the AMA. Lots of speculation, some abstractions and a the simplest of common sense leads to the conclusion that there is enough smoke around to warrant calling the fire department. But we do not appear to have a phone, let alone a fully equipped fire department.

We spend 2.4 trillion dollars a year on health care. All of that is paid by the public, either privately or through taxes. If there were no Medicare or S-CHIP or Medicaid, the public would still foot the bill through obligatory ER care for the indigent that is billed through to private and public carriers. Using the ER for primary care for 50 million people is doubtless more expensive, but at least it doesn't explode the federal budget. It just explodes your private health care bill. You can't hide from societal obligations, as much as your miserly little heart would like to. If you have a problem saving the life of a critically ill poor person, then you are welcome to not pay your taxes and to drop your personal health coverage, end up in jail or the ER yourself, and bankrupt. You are going to pay, one way or another, either through the offices of government or the inflated profits of private health care monopolies.

Now the Republicans think they can retake the country if they can force a health care bill that subsidizes coverage for 50 million people and does nothing to reduce costs. A bill like that would cost the trillion dollar CBO budget rules red herring figure that they so relish repeating. It would have tax implications and would revitalize the tax and spend liberal label of old, even as the Republicans were responsible for the burgeoning Medicare Part D, the Iraq War and TARP, not to mention the Great Recession.

Politically, economically and socially, it is not worth passing a bill that does not reduce health care costs, except to temporarily mitigate the ER as primary care status quo for 50 million people. Temporary, because the budget effects would empower the Republicans, and if they regain control of the government, they will continue their unrelenting agenda to demolish Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP and everything else progressive, including a gutted health care reform bill itself.

So what we have is a first order political, economic and social crisis for which the solution seems to be much more politically slippery than starting an unjustified war. The one thing we might all be able to agree upon is that the health care industry is acting like a monopoly, even if it is not more that a collection of regional monopolies. And the solution should be to break up those anti-competitive monopolies, a remedy that the Republicans are ideologically disposed to believe in, if not practically.

Breaking up the health care monopolies is possible by several means in order of effectiveness and cost to the public.

1 ) A government-run single payer system would eliminate private insurer profiteering from the picture entirely, at the cost of displacing a boat load of insurance workers and provider billing workers. But with America's health bills cut by half, the nation can easily absorb the job displacements. No fits and starts required as Medicare and the VA are well understood models in place. As important, the potential for price fixing and fraudulent procedures would be reduced as their could be little effective collusion between payer and payee.

2) A government run health insurance system, the "public option", puts competitive pressure on health insurance companies and lowers the effectiveness of collusion on prices. And make no mistake, as unfair as a government insurance option might be in a real free market, we are not dealing with a free market. We are dealing with monopolies. So fighting monopolies with a government backed monopoly is entirely fair. If, as is being floated right now, there might be a "trigger" associated with implementation of a public plan, the trigger should not be about when to start it up, but should be about conditions under which it might be shut down. A trigger for implementation is just kicking the can down the road to where the Republicans hope they will have grown their number in Congress and overrule the trigger.

3) A national health care regulatory system would, presumably, not brook price fixing or market consolidations that lead to monopolies. This would undo the effect of monopolies without, necessarily, undoing the monopolies. It would require a different order of bureaucracy, one to enforce rather than implement, and would be extremely complex to administer. It would also be subject to political influence, just like the SEC.

4) An FTC mandate to remedy health care monopolies would take the remaining lifetimes of the Baby Boomers to undo the monopolies that it already took their youths to produce. And law enforcement is never so effective as is making it impossible to break the law by eliminating the institutions that are subject of the enforcement.

5) Sweeping business tax code incentives/disincentives specific to health care could make a difference in a relatively short time, but tax measures can be perverse, creating unintended incentives. And, the making of tax code is as opaque an undertaking as we have in our legislative process, and hence subject to manipulation by vested parties. So taxes might be an assist, but are likely to fall far short of a cure.

6) All of the above in various combinations.

If any of this gets done in the coming weeks it will be something instead of nothing. Any bill must contain costs if not roll them back, and if it is not the best solution, then, unlike what the media would have you believe, the game is not over. There are lots of ways to accomplish what needs to be done, some just better and quicker than others. The media meme that failure to pass something will destroy the administration is farcical. Historically, Clinton did lose a majority in the house after the failure to produce a health care solution. But that probably had more to do with the temporal proximity of his Presidency to that of the immensely popular Reagan theme than it did with legislative failure. Clinton ran as a conservative Democrat in a three way race and did not go into office with anything like the mandate of Obama, yet still won a second term, even in a Reagan America. America is no longer a sole proprietorship of Ronald Reagan, his ideas and philosophies having been as discredited as is possible. The political climate has changed and the application of an imaginary consequence to Obama goes unquestioned by the punditry, as ever. The only pertinent consequence for Democrats is if, at the end of this legislative round, the public is less inclined toward health care reform. So far, polls show that they waver on means but not the ends. For Clinton, the public supported neither the means nor ends.

So the failure to pass anything is of questionable consequence. More certain is that a bad bill, one that does nothing to contain or lower costs, will raise the prospects for a Republican resurgence. The Republicans know this, and are quite callously exploiting the moral imperative of the proposed legislation, that of expanding coverage, to pad insurance profits while fashioning an albatross for the Democrat's couture.

If the Obama Administration and Congress fail to act in the best interests of the public as indelibly voiced in the 2006 and 2008 elections, then it is up to the public to try again. If reform fails, it will be emblematic of a corrupt system of influence, a thing very like the rationale for the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. And it will be perfectly indicative that the fight must be taken to the next level, the very core and substance of how our representatives are elected. As a monopoly is corrupt, our health care system is corrupt, and then a government that cannot effectively deal with that corruption must itself be corrupt. Take a page from Sherman, Roosevelt and Taft, Republicans all.

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Mother's devotion to kids recalled - Honolulu Advertiser

Posted: 08 Sep 2009 09:32 AM PDT

Kristen Castro remembered her baby sister, Suzanne Leong, as a devoted mother who provided around-the-clock care to her 8-year-old daughter, Aimee Ng, who was born prematurely.

Aimee was the only one in her Waimea family to survive a head-on car crash late Saturday on the Big Island that police said may have been alcohol related. She underwent surgery at The Queen's Medical Center for her injuries.

Leong, her boyfriend Brandon Ng, and their 5-year-old son, Aidon Ng, were killed in the crash. The family was on their way home from a friend's birthday party.

Rupert Tripp Jr., a guitarist with the acoustic jazz trio Kohala, was driving the other car and was injured. Tripp, of Kea'au, was also taken to Queen's.

Ng was driving a Chevrolet station wagon that crossed the center line on Highway 19 and collided with Tripp's Mercury sport utility vehicle. Police have opened a negligent homicide investigation.

Castro said yesterday that Aimee's surgery went well and she may be transferred to Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women and Children.

"Her kids were everything to her," Castro said of her sister, Suzanne, a stay-at-home mother.

Castro said Aimee required constant care as a result of her premature birth. "My sister made the choice to do that, to do whatever it took."

Castro had just moved back to the Big Island last week from Honolulu. "I've always wanted to move back," she said. "But I think there was a reason for me to come here."

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Mulberry Restoring Baby Hospital - Southwest Times Record

Posted: 08 Sep 2009 09:04 AM PDT

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HAND: When crazy was common - Sun Chronicle

Posted: 08 Sep 2009 10:37 AM PDT

Check out our columnists' blogs

GUEST COLUMN: Nationalized care unhealthy

ETHICS IN THE NEWS: partisanship counts too much in debates

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HAND: When crazy was common

Last week at a health care town meeting in California, a man got up and declared himself "a proud right-wing terrorist."

Rather than admonish the self-described terrorist, Republican Rep. Wally Herger praised him as a "great American." Herger later claimed he was joking.

After all, nothing tickles the funny bone like the prospect of innocent people dying in a terrorist attack. But when a video of the town meeting surfaced, it was clear he was not kidding. He was supportive of the speaker.

At least the man in the crowd did not bring an assault weapon to the meeting. At one health care meeting featuring President Barack Obama, a man paraded outside the grounds of the building toting an assault weapon. At an event in New Hampshire another man carried a handgun in full view.

Conservative politicians defended the men, seeing nothing wrong with brandishing weapons outside presidential events in an attempt to intimidate the president's supporters. If something like that had happened with George Bush, Dick Cheney would have had the men arrested and waterboarded.

The town meetings are coming to an end now as Congress returns to session, bringing a close to the worse political summer since the riots and assassinations of 1968. The summer of 2009 will be remembered as the summer when crazy went mainstream. Extremists of all stripes dominated the political debate during the summer, and the media made little attempt to separate those with legitimate concerns from the shouters on the fringe.

During the Bush years, Fox News called anti-war demonstrators left wing anti-American haters. This summer, the network called people who compared Obama to Adolph Hitler the voice of Middle America.

The viciousness went unbridled.

At one town meeting, a woman in a wheelchair talking about her troubles with health insurance was booed. A single mother who said she could not afford insurance was told to grow up. An African-American congressman who defended Obama's health care proposals was sent racist threats full of the N-word.

The craziness was certainly not limited to voters. Elected officials disgraced themselves with lies and pandering to the ugliest of emotions. Sara Palin, the former Alaskan governor who quit her post, saying "I'm a fighter not a quitter," made up a bizarre story that health care reform would mean her Down syndrome baby would have to go before an "Obama death panel" to determine if he could get care. Sen. Chuck Grassley furthered the lie by saying Obama's plan could "pull the plug on grandma."

The whackiness went well beyond health care. In Texas, they are holding rallies to get the state to leave the nation. (None of the other 49 states are objecting.)

Then there are the birthers. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, they claim Obama was born in Kenya, not Hawaii, and therefore is not a U.S. citizen and is ineligible to be president. They even published a forged Kenyan birth certificate to try to make their case.

But, U.S. Rep. Michelle Bachmann is the heavyweight champ of weird statements. She warned parents that the government community service program known as AmeriCorp was really a plot to establish re-education camps for youths. Then, she found out her own son had joined.

Of course, no one fishes the bottom on the pond like Glenn Beck of Fox News. Beck called Obama a "racist."

He said the president is "a guy who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture."

Maybe that is what Nat King Cole was singing about in "Those Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer."

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Chimp-ly irresistible - New York Post

Posted: 08 Sep 2009 02:01 AM PDT

It's the strongest call of the wild -- a mother's instinct.

Anjana the chimp doesn't seem to notice that the new baby in her care is a 9-week-old puma cub named Sierra as she cuddles and feeds it at the Institute of Greatly Endangered and Rare Species in Myrtle Beach, SC.

Anjana, a 5-year-old orphan, was trained to help raise the center's feline residents.

"She is a great assistant," the park's director, Dr. Bhagavan Antle, told London's Daily Mail. "If you need a baby wipe, you can just tell her, and she'll run off and get it."