I now know why so-many of our American members are so interested in the British NHS. This article appeared in today's Guardian:

The National Health Service has become the butt of increasingly outlandish political attacks in the US as Republicans and conservative campaigners rail against Britain's "socialist" system as part of a tussle to defeat Barack Obama's proposals for broader government involvement in healthcare.

Top-ranking Republicans have joined bloggers and well-funded free market organisations in scorning the NHS for its waiting lists and for "rationing" the availability of expensive treatments.

As myths and half-truths circulate, British diplomats in the US are treading a delicate line in correcting falsehoods while trying to stay out of a vicious domestic dogfight over the future of American health policy.

Slickly produced television advertisements trumpet the alleged failures of the NHS's 61-year tradition of tax-funded healthcare. To the dismay of British healthcare professionals, US critics have accused the service of putting an "Orwellian" financial cap on the value on human life, of allowing elderly people to die untreated and, in one case, for driving a despairing dental patient to mend his teeth with superglue.

Having seen his approval ratings drop, Obama is seeking to counter this conservative onslaught by taking his message to the public, with a "town hall" meeting today at a school in New Hampshire.

Last week, the most senior Republican on the Senate finance committee, Chuck Grassley, took NHS-baiting to a newly emotive level by claiming that his ailing Democratic colleague, Edward Kennedy, would be left to die untreated from a brain tumour in Britain on the grounds that he would be considered too old to deserve treatment.

"I don't know for sure," said Grassley. "But I've heard several senators say that Ted Kennedy with a brain tumour, being 77 years old as opposed to being 37 years old, if he were in England, would not be treated for his disease, because end of life – when you get to be 77, your life is considered less valuable under those systems."

The degree of misinformation is causing dismay in NHS circles. Andrew Dillon, chief executive of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), pointed out that it was utterly false that Kennedy would be left untreated in Britain: "It is neither true nor is it anything you could extrapolate from anything we've ever recommended to the NHS."

Others in the US have accused Obama of trying to set up "death panels" to decide who should live and who should die, along the lines of Nice, which determines the cost-effectiveness of NHS drugs.

One right-leaning group, Conservatives for Patients' Rights, lists horror stories about British care on its website. An email widely circulated among US voters, of uncertain origin, claims that anyone over 59 in Britain is ineligible for treatment for heart disease.

The British embassy in Washington is quietly trying to counter inaccuracies. A spokesman said: "We're keeping a close eye on things and where there's a factually wrong statement, we will take the opportunity to correct people in private. That said, we don't want to get involved in a domestic debate."

A $1.2m television advertising campaign bankrolled by the conservative Club for Growth displays images of the union flag and Big Ben while intoning a figure of $22,750. A voiceover says: "In England, government health officials have decided that's how much six months of life is worth. If a medical treatment costs more, you're out of luck."

The number is based on a ratio of £30,000 a year used by Nice in its assessment of whether drugs provide value for money. Dillon said this was one of many variables in determining cost-effectiveness of medicines. He said of his body's portrayal in the US: "It's very disappointing and it's not, obviously, the way in which Nice describes itself or the way in which we're perceived in the UK even among those who are disappointed or upset by our decisions."

On Rupert Murdoch's Fox News channel, the conservative commentator Sean Hannity recently alighted upon the case of Gordon Cook, a security manager from Merseyside, who used superglue to stick a loose crown into his gum because he was unable to find an NHS dentist. The cautionary tale, which was based on a Daily Mail report from 2006, prompted Hannity to warn his viewers: "If the Democrats have their way, get your superglue ready."

The broader tone of the US healthcare debate has become increasingly bitter. The former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin last week described president Obama's proposals as "evil", while the radio presenter Rush Limbaugh has compared a logo used for the White House's reform plans to a Nazi swastika. Hecklers have disrupted town hall meetings called to discuss the health reform plans.

David Levinthal, a spokesman for the nonpartisan Centre for Responsive Politics, said the sheer scale of the issue, which will affect the entire trajectory of US medical care, was arousing passions: "It's no surprise you have factions from every political stripe attempting to influence the debate and some of those groups are certainly playing to the deepest fears of Americans. There's been a great deal of documented disinformation propagated throughout the country." Defenders of Britain's system point out that the UK spends less per head on healthcare but has a higher life expectancy than the US. The World Health Organisation ranks Britain's healthcare as 18th in the world, while the US is in 37th place. The British Medical Association said a majority of Britain's doctors have consistently supported public provision of healthcare. A spokeswoman said the association's 140,000 members were sceptical about the US approach to medicine: "Doctors and the public here are appalled that there are so many people on the US who don't have proper access to healthcare. It's something we would find very, very shocking."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/1...publican-health

Maybe because they are thinking like this....if this is 'thinking'!

http://fwix.com/share/52_d018028f67

Holly Benson, secretary of Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration . . .
suggested poor people can solve health care woes like heart disease and diabetes 
with a quick jog around the block. After all, she told a radio host earlier this year, 
unemployment “means you have a lot more time to go running.” [i.e. the poorer you are and the less you can afford health insurance because you are unemployed and/or homeless - even infirmed and bed-ridden, the more time you have for exercise.....]



The real reason are the huge profits of the Big Medicine, Hospital, Insurance, Physicians Practice, Pharmaceuticals, Surgeons, medical malpractice lawyers, etc.......they will not surrender their ugly profits. An American brain surgeon makes tens of millions per year. The medical insurance companies make billions and billions and spend it on anything but health care for their clients.

This anti-NHS conspiracy is causing problems for David Cameron and the Conservative Party:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/au...vid-cameron-nhs

David Cameron was packing up the beach gear and letting down the Lilos at his holiday retreat in northern France when his mobile rang. Throughout a relaxing family fortnight in Brittany, his staff at Westminster had found few reasons to disturb him. A report in the Daily Mirror about toxic seaweed on the Brittany coast had been relayed a few days earlier, but apart from that all had been blissful and calm.

As he prepared for the ferry journey home last Wednesday, however, the Tory leader was jolted back to reality. He knew that his holiday was well and truly over when an aide told him that Alan Duncan, his shadow leader of the Commons and a multimillionaire, had been caught on film saying that MPs were having to live on "rations" following the clean-up of MPs' expenses. They were treated "like shit", Duncan was filmed saying. The remarks were leading the news.

Before the Camerons crossed the Channel, the Tory leader, well aware of implications for his party's image if he dithered, got on the phone to Duncan, a former oil trader, and told him "in no uncertain terms" that his behaviour had been unacceptable. Cameron pulled no punches saying he had made a "bad mistake" that presented Tory politicians in a terrible light. All Conservatives had to show they shared the public's anger about expenses, not stoke it further.

"It will have been a very uncomfortable call for Alan," said one of Cameron's inner circle. But Duncan remained in his shadow cabinet post.

Little did Cameron know that even more trouble was brewing that would throw his party further on to the back foot and lift Labour morale to its highest level for months.

On Wednesday morning, political blogs were reporting that Daniel Hannan, a Tory MEP admired by Cameron, had gone on American television to rubbish the National Health Service.

Cameron has made great play of wanting to preserve the NHS and pump money into it. He holds the British system – free at the point of delivery – in particular affection because of all it did for his severely disabled son Ivan, who died aged six in February.

He told the Tory conference in 2006: "My family is so often in the hands of the NHS. And I want them to be safe there. Tony Blair once explained his priority in three words: 'Education, education, education.' I can do it in three letters – NHS." More than anything, he believes his commitment to the NHS defines his new conservatism.

But Hannan, a cult figure on the libertarian right of the party who became a YouTube star a few months ago after a speech he made attacking Gordon Brown in the European parliament, had taken a dramatically different view. In an interview with Fox News, he explained why he was urging Americans to reject the UK model of universal state provision that his party's leader so cherished.

"Because you're our friends, and if you see a friend about to make a terrible mistake you try to warn him," he said. "We have lived through this mistake for 60 years now."

Hannan made it clear that healthcare should be opened more to the market, that patients should be able to pay for drugs rather than have to wait in queues. He wants a system of personal accounts into which people would save and then shop around for health care in the public or private sector.

Health expenditure would be managed by the individual, in association with his or her doctor. The state would provide the safety net for those who could not afford to save enough, but its role would be drastically reduced. There would be low-cost insurance to cover people for unforeseen catastrophic illness. But the NHS would go. It took some time for the Tory machine to react, but when Cameron heard, he and others in the high command squashed Hannan in quick succession.

As the leader dismissed his views as "eccentric", shadow health spokesman Andrew Lansley said he had done millions of NHS patients a "disservice". And Timothy Kirkhope, leader of the Tory MEPs, even admitted the Tories' reputation abroad could suffer: "It does worry me a little bit that an impression is being given in the United States about the views of David Cameron and the Conservative party which is not accurate."


In Labour circles, Duncan – and even more so Hannan – helped to lift a party that has been on its knees. Last week began with the Tories hoping to steal a march on Labour over the NHS by promoting their plans to modernise, not dismantle, it. The latest big idea was to allow patients access to their medical records online. It was also the week shadow chancellor George Osborne claimed his party was the real guardian of public services. "The torch of progressive politics has been passed to a new generation of politicians – and those politicians are Conservatives," he said.

But the decision to make it NHS week had blown up in their faces. Labour saw its chance. The party of money and privilege, Labour said, lived on, as did its Thatcherite instincts towards public services. "The battle lines for the general election campaign are drawn. It is a turning point for us, no doubt about it. It is the return of the nasty party," said a Cabinet source.

Until Parliament broke for the summer recess, Cameron appeared to have emerged stronger than Gordon Brown from the expenses scandal. Although his own MPs were guilty of many of the most outrageous claims – for moat dredging, duck ponds and second homes – the Tory leader had seemed quicker off the mark than the prime minister in showing errant MPs the door, and surer-footed in his calls for reform.

His party's thumping victory in the Norwich North by-election last month, which saw 27-year-old Chloe Smith thrust into Parliament as the youngest MP, was taken as confirmation that Cameron's modernisation and detoxification strategy was still broadly on track. "Roll on the general election, when the British people also have the opportunity to vote for change," said a triumphant Smith.

But even before last week's setbacks, the new breed of Tories were coming more under the microscope, and the odd question was being asked. A survey of 144 party candidates in the 220 most winnable seats by ConservativeHome website had shown Cameron's new cohort in government would be solidly, and fairly traditionally, rightwing. Only 9% believed that as MPs they should send their children to a state school (though Cameron has vowed to do that). Asked which spending programme should be most immune from cuts, 4% said international development, 34% health, 35% defence and 27% schools. They were also stridently Eurosceptic.

Nothing much wrong with that, the Tory high command would say. But last month the Tories became embroiled in a row about Cameron's choice of partners in a new grouping in the European parliament that includes the 25 Conservative MEPs. Prominent figures in the Jewish community in the UK and Poland called on the Tory leader to disown the group's Polish leader, Michal Kaminski, who has been accused of anti-semitic and homophobic leanings in his past.

Kaminski flatly rejected the charges again last week as "disgusting", but the accusations refuse to go away. Some of Kaminski's denials have failed to hold water. Despite his claims to be pro-gay, he is on record as describing gay people as "poofs" and "fags". New evidence about the views of his Law and Justice party emerge by the day. Out of 39 Law and Justice members of the Polish parliament's upper house (senate), 22 signed a petition to prohibit a planned gay rights march in Krakow this year. They referred to it as "promoting deviation and demoralising behaviour". Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, is said to be dismayed by Cameron's new allies and the Tory leader's attitude to Europe, as is French president Nicolas Sarkozy.

Hot on the heels of the Kaminski furore, Tory MEP Roger Helmer infuriated gay groups by suggesting on his blog that homophobia did not exist, causing severe embarrassment to a party that is holding a gay pride event at its autumn conference this year.

"Homophobia is merely a propaganda device designed to denigrate and stigmatise those holding conventional opinions, which have been held by most people through most of recorded history," said Helmer, who also supported Hannan's view on the NHS. Ben Summerskill, chief executive of Stonewall, who is due to attend the event in October, said: "If Mr Helmer thinks that homophobia doesn't exist in modern Britain, then perhaps he should be introduced to the families of Michael Causer and Jody Dobrowski. I suspect that their dignity in the face of the murders of their sons by homophobes might cause Mr Helmer to think again."

Millionaire Tories bemoaning their poverty, evidence of homophobia, hardline euroscepticism, demands to scrap the NHS… Where was compassionate, modern, socially liberal Cameronism, which championed public services, minorities and the less well off?

Add to this Boris Johnson's recent description of his annual haul of £250,000 from a newspaper column as "chicken feed" and the Tories' downcast opponents began to hope. Labour leaders began to make links – and present Cameron's entire renewal project as fake.

Former Europe minister Denis MacShane said: "Daniel Hannan's pandering to the hard right in America, with an attack on the NHS, is mirrored by his pandering to the hard right in Europe with his support for homophobe and racist Polish politicians.

"Dan Hannan is modern Toryism and Cameron's failure to discipline him – and to sack Duncan – further reflects the strength of support there is for their views in the modern Tory party."


At Cameron HQ, they are uneasy about this spurt of bad publicity, but insist the push for government is being run by true "progressives". A batch of young advisers who are light years from the Thatcehrite tradition is gathering round. Jonty Olliff-Cooper, 26, a former policy adviser to the party, now works at the thinktank Demos, running a programme called progressive conservatism that was launched by Cameron in January. He said he could list 50 people working with or close to the party's leadership who were true reformists.

He described a new group of twentysomething advisers who were, in effect, the new Notting Hill Set. And there were many more "young and fashionable" people working on the periphery of the party. "People like Hannan exist within the party, but the people actually pulling the strings have really interesting and progressive ideas," Olliff-Cooper said. "They are people who are conservative in that they want to lower taxes and reduce the size of the state, but they don't want to leave people without support."

He said he would not describe himself as rightwing but as progressive. He studied history at Oxford and went on to work as a management consultant, teacher and then civil servant. He ended up in the prime minister's strategy unit, working on public service reform and was about to move to the Foreign Office when he got a call from Conservative HQ. "I asked a friend working with George Osborne, and she said, 'Really, they have changed – take a look'."

Olliff-Cooper, who had never voted Conservative, was offered a job as a policy adviser. He is now in the process of setting up a new group to be called Bright Blue or Right On made up of Conservatives in their 20s who want to promote the progressive agenda internally and externally. Others include Rohan Silva, also in his 20s, who came from the treasury to work for Osborne. Then there is Sam Coates , formerly the deputy editor of Conservative Home, who is now a speechwriter for Cameron. Also on the programme at Demos is Max Wind-Cowie, who is gay, went to a comprehensive school in Cumbria, and whose background is in charities and social enterprise.

But, as we report today, Labour is now wheeling out its cabinet big guns in force, believing it has the evidence it has long sought. It has its "narrative". In 1997, it swept to power saying, "24 hours to save the NHS". Its point is that the Tories are more rightwing than they make out. Indeed, Hannan lists a group of Tory MPs and MEPs, including education spokesman Michael Gove, as supporters of his views in the books The Plan: Twelve Months to Renew Britain and Direct Democracy: An Agenda for a New Model Party.

Labour believes it gathered enough ammunition last week alone to see it through the autumn party conference season and well into an election campaign next spring. Writing for the Observer today, Cabinet minister Pat MacFadden says: "Hannan's comments show there are two faces to the Conservative Party – the one the leadership would like us to see and the unchanged rightwing underbelly hostile to the NHS and much else besides."

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardi...wson-on-001.jpg

Healthcare reform in America isn't helped by the fact that in a time of severe recession, the American people are not being told the truth - if anyone knows the truth - about how it will be paid for. Out of one side of his mouth, Obama says that he will not sign any bill that adds to the federal deficit. Out of the other side of his mouth, he says that healthcare reform will cost up to 1 trillion dollars over the next 10 years (or 100 billion dollars per year). The American people would like to know which side of his mouth to believe.

Given the Trillions given to the Banksters, War and 'Defense' get - and the money SAVED by having a more close-to NHP than Insurance/Doctor/Hospital theftsters get, who cares what it costs!!!! What price life and health! Wake UP America!

Yes, that should be printed on our dollar bills nowadays, instead of the outmoded "In God We Trust."



Life and health will depreciate in a country that spent itself into bankruptcy like a drunken sailor, in which people's life savings are wiped out and their paper money is worthless, and the only people who will feel relatively safe are those with AK-47s and plenty of rounds of ammunition.

I agree on your first part. I also hear your pain as your nestegg is no doubt quickly becoming a small pile of pigeon pooh. I already LOST everything....for other reasons, not directly connected..but connected to the same people and same 'morality' [sic]. I'll have to work to my dying day..oh, maybe I'll take that last day off....


Very sick society, richest in the world, but can only spend its lucre on war and the already filthy rich, and say **** to the average person. It is 'socialism' for them, and free market bankster dog-eat-dog capitalism for us...you pays your money,and you take your chances...but for THEM there are no 'chances' - only Profits and HYPER profits. How dumb can the American Public be? To not see what is being done. With the money given to the banksters alone ALL credit card debt, all mortgages and all depleted pensions could have been made whole...instead the rich were made richer and the poor poorer - that is out system - though the propaganda system says otherwise. Sure the USA has the 'best health system' - IF YOU CAN AFFORD IT - and if you can't, we are at the very very bottom of the list of all developed nations....and below a few third-world nations, Cuba to name one.

One of the things ignored by the American critics of our NHS is that the rich do not use it. They are free to contribute to any private health care insurance scheme they want to. The service they receive is usually much better than the NHS. However, they are very expensive and only a small proportion can afford to pay for this kind of insurance.

John, You mean the Royal Family don't go to the NHS?!...I'm shocked.


ANJALI KAMAT: We begin today with the continuing debate on healthcare reform. The White House indicated this weekend that it might be willing to drop proposals for a public insurance plan to compete with the private sector. 

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Sunday on CNN that the public option was, quote, “not the essential element” of comprehensive reform. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs also hinted as much when he told CBS’s Face the Nation that the President, quote, “will be satisfied” if they could come up with a plan that provided choice and competition in the insurance market outside of a government plan option. 

Their comments came one day after President Obama’s own response at a healthcare forum in Colorado. He said, quote, “the public option, whether we have it or don’t have it, is not the entirety of healthcare reform.” 

AMY GOODMAN: As the White House seems to be willing to back off a public option, is considering North Dakota Democratic Senator Kent Conrad’s proposal for a nonprofit health cooperative, we take a look at what’s really shaping the healthcare debate behind the scenes. 

In a cover story for BusinessWeek earlier this month, reporters Chad Terhune and Keith Epstein argue UnitedHealth and other insurers maneuvered to shape healthcare reform for their own benefit. The story is called “The Health Insurers Have Already Won.” The authors argue the insurers have, quote, "succeeded in redefining the terms of the reform debate to such a degree that no matter what specifics emerge in the voluminous bill Congress may send to President Obama this fall, the insurance industry will emerge more profitable.” 

Well, we’re joined on the phone from Florida by co-author of the piece, Chad Terhune, senior writer at BusinessWeek, where he’s covered healthcare for several years. 

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Chad. Explain first why you believe, no matter what option is presented, no matter what the bill is, the health insurers have won. 

CHAD TERHUNE: First, thanks for having me on. 

I think if you look back earlier in the year, there was a lot of gloom and doom for the insurance industry, a lot of harsh rhetoric from both the President and Congress. But if you look even, you know, by midsummer, you could get a pretty good picture of what was going to come in a final bill. And as you just noticed, we’re kind of getting clear confirmation that there’s not going to be a public plan. And I could have told you that from my reporting earlier in the summer, just was not going to happen. 

And I think if you—if you look from an insurance company’s point of view, a public plan was the worst thing they wanted to avoid. They do not want to compete against the government, so they can check that off. And then, two, things like the minimum benefits, what coverage will everyone have to buy, they don’t want that to be a expansive, generous list of benefits; they want to whittle that down to where you and I would have to pay more out of pocket, insurance would cover less. They’ve been very persuasive on that, knocking down that number of what the minimum benefits would be. 

And then there’s other things, like you look at all the positive. They’re going to get millions of new customers, armed with generous government subsidies. That’s a lot more paying customers. And things like that, and all the wellness programs and preventive care that Obama and everybody talk about, well, the insurers offer a lot of that. And you’re going to have expanded Medicaid. UnitedHealth is the biggest Medicaid contractor. The states contract that out and pay people like United to administer that. So when you add it all up, that’s kind of where we got with our story, that, net, this is a big plus for the insurance industry, and particularly a giant like UnitedHealth. 

ANJALI KAMAT: Chad, can you talk about the kind of data and information that insurers like UnitedHealth provide to congressional staffers? 

CHAD TERHUNE: Yeah, so there’s kind of two examples. One, United, probably more so than the other companies, said, “Look, how can we kind of break through the clutter? How can we grab the attention of these congressional members?” And specifically, we’re talking about moderate Democrats. These would be the swing votes on anything going through Congress, so they focus most of their efforts on the Blue Dogs in the House and then the moderate Democrats in the Senate, like Kent Conrad, Mark Warner, people like that, who would be sympathetic to views of business. 

And one, you know, the big thing in Congress is, how are we going to pay for this trillion-dollar health reform? And particularly the Blue Dogs and other fiscal conservatives, they worry about the deficit, how much things cost. And so, United said, “Well, look, we can be an expert on this. We can give you these long, lengthy reports on how to save billions of dollars in Medicare and other federal health savings, so you can then turn around and say, ‘Look, we’re paying for this expensive health reform.’” Not exactly pushing United’s issues, but it gets them in the door, and they’re seen much more as a force for solution instead of just opposing everything. And I think that was very key to be coming across as having expertise and knowledge and kind of deciding that “we are the department of day-to-day reality. You in Washington don’t really understand complicated healthcare; we do. So you should sit down and listen to us.” 

And then, on a secondary phase, more of a—directly in their benefit, they would come in with numbers of, OK, if you say these are the minimum benefits, these are the package, and it comes with an actuarial figure, that’s basically a percentage of how much the insurance company pays on average and how much you and I as consumers would pay out of pocket. And at one point it was about 76 percent, being the percentage the insurance company would pay, and we would pay the rest in co-pays, deductibles out of pocket. And over time, through the Senate Finance Committee, that’s gotten whittled down to about 65 percent. And that’s still subject to change. 

But the fear is that people could have coverage, there will be mandates for coverage, everybody goes and buys some, but you still really could be exposed to medical bankruptcy. I mean, that’s a lot of money, if you still had to pay, you know, $10,000 out of pocket after a major accident or illness. Not a lot of people have that money laying around. 

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to BusinessWeek’s Chad Terhune. I wanted to play for you a clip from yesterday’s—one of its talk shows. Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah was on ABC’s This Week on Sunday. Like many in the Senate who are critical of a public option, the figures he cited were from the Lewin Group on two occasions, when the substitute host Jake Tapper disclosed that the Lewin Group is owned by UnitedHealth. 

SEN. ORRIN HATCH: They want to move, according to the Lewin Group, up to 119 million people into Medicaid. If that happens, it would destroy the health insurance programs throughout the country. Eight of ten Americans really—really want their health insurance coverage. They don’t want to lose it. If we turn over this country’s healthcare to a government plan and we open up a government plan, the Lewin Group, one of the best analytical groups in healthcare in the country, if not the best, said that up to 119.1 million people would transfer from private insurance into the government plan. 

JAKE TAPPER: Well, Senator— 

SEN. ORRIN HATCH: If that happens— 

JAKE TAPPER: Senator Hatch, we should point out— 

SEN. ORRIN HATCH: Yeah. 

JAKE TAPPER: —first of all, the Lewin Group is owned by UnitedHealthcare, although they insist their editorial— 

SEN. ORRIN HATCH: Fine, but they’re still highly respected. 

JAKE TAPPER: Yeah, I— 

SEN. ORRIN HATCH: Fine, but they’re— 

JAKE TAPPER: I’m not disputing that, but let me ask you a question. 

SEN. ORRIN HATCH: They’re highly respected.


AMY GOODMAN: So that’s a clip from This Week on ABC yesterday. That was Senator Orrin Hatch. Chad Terhune, talk about the Lewin Group, cited over and over again by the opponents of the public plan. They don’t say who funds it; they just say, “According to the Lewin Group, a well-respected group.” 

CHAD TERHUNE: No, it’s a good question. The Lewin Group has been around for many, many years. UnitedHealth bought it in the last few years. They have done work for both Democrats and Republicans over the years and generally get hired by people like the Heritage Foundation, but they’ve also done some work with more liberal-leaning groups. And they have been around for a long time. They have many smart people. But the fact that they are owned by UnitedHealthcare—and this is kind of going back many years—UnitedHealth, more than just an insurance company, has expanded much more into kind of the knowledge and data and software business. Kind of controlling information is very key in healthcare. 

Yes, they say that they’re two separate organizations, and the people at Lewin Group say they can call it like they see it, but it is very, even to me, surprising how much one group’s analysis has come to dominate the debate. And yes, many opponents of a public plan, both Democrats and Republicans, have latched on to their numbers. 

And I’m a little surprised Senator Hatch would still use the 119 number, because I think that is from April, and that was actually based on proposals made in the campaign going all the way back to October of ’08. And the latest number from Lewin Group, while still high, is more like 88 million people, they predict. So, you know, even 119 is kind of an outdated number. But the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which I think more people put some stock in, they have had a number of total that would go into a public plan would be nine to ten million. And they have even publicly, in one of their letters to Congress, said the Lewin Group number is just way out of the ballpark. So, you know, people can certainly take whatever they want to take from those various numbers, and these are projections, but the CBO certainly differed with Lewin Group. 

AMY GOODMAN: Chad Terhune, we have to break, but we’re going to come back. And we want to play a clip of a film that the filmmaker Robert Greenwald did, looking at the power of the insurance industries, and particularly focusing on UnitedHealth. Chad Terhune is a senior writer at BusinessWeek who has covered the healthcare industry for years. Stay with us. 

[break] 

AMY GOODMAN: The Obama administration is now talking about abandoning the public plan. Anjali? 

ANJALI KAMAT: I want to turn to an excerpt from a new documentary by Robert Greenwald at Brave New Films. It’s called Sick for Profit, and it looks at the profits made by UnitedHealth CEO Stephen Hemsley and the insurance claims UnitedHealth has denied. 

STEPHANIE GRIGGS: I have three daughters. My oldest daughter is Adriana. She’s ten years old. My middle daughter is Kennedy, and she’s eight. And my youngest is Isabella. She turned five in April. 

Our world was pretty much turned upside down in a matter of minutes. To us, finding out that we would have a critically ill child who had not just one, but multiple life-threatening disorders was just mind-boggling. At that point, ear infections were the worst thing in the world. We were told initially that the paperwork was lost. A couple weeks later, we were told by UnitedHealthcare that it was denied. 

REP. DONNA EDWARDS: The big winners in this broken healthcare system, let’s look at who they are. The CEO of UnitedHealth Group, Stephen Hemsley, his salary, $3.2 million. 

UNIDENTIFIED: The incredible gross profits of the private health insurance industry that is at the core of the problem. 

ELIZABETH EDWARDS: A few years ago, I think the president of UnitedHealthcare made so much money that one in every 700 dollars that was spent in this country on healthcare went to pay him. So… 

JON STEWART: Did you hear that? 

ELIZABETH EDWARDS: Pretty striking. It’s pretty amazing, isn’t it? 

JON STEWART: They just got a little gasp out of those folks. 

ELIZABETH EDWARDS: Yeah, I know, yeah. 

UNIDENTIFIED: Profits these insurance companies are making, folks, absolutely they are obscene. 

HOLLY BAILEY: My entire colon ended up getting large and pretty much dying and with no explanation. They did several tests, and after my second surgery—and that’s when they had to put me on the IV nutrition. Everything I ate just came straight through and was not being absorbed. That’s why I had to have the TPN to keep me alive and to keep hydrated even. 

They kept telling my local pharmacy, who was providing the TPN, “Oh, we’re just waiting for one more letter,” or, “We’re just waiting for one more script, and then we’ll start paying.” This went on for six months. And December 4th, both the pharmacy and I received a letter through UnitedHealthcare saying that they deemed it medically unnecessary and that they were not going to pay any of it. I tried to explain to them that if I do not have this, I will die. And the only response she gave me was, “OK.” 

UNIDENTIFIED: The government officials are actually calling this the biggest health insurance scam they have ever seen. The victims are patients. In many cases, very sick patients. 

JOANNA JOSHUA: He was six months old. We were at the pediatrician, and he mentioned that Dylan would probably need the DOC band helmet to correct the plagiocephaly. And if he didn’t wear this helmet, then he could potentially have issues eating. Two months into the treatment, we got the denial letter from UnitedHealthcare saying that they weren’t going to cover it. They viewed the helmet as cosmetic. 

UNIDENTIFIED: Why are we putting money into the profits of insurance companies rather than into medicine? 

STEPHEN HEMSLEY: My name is Steve Hemsley, and I’m the president and the chief executive of UnitedHealth Group. Our mission at UnitedHealth Group is to help people live healthier lives, and our more than 80,000 employees do this every day for more than 70 million Americans.


AMY GOODMAN: That’s an excerpt of Robert Greenwald’s film Sick for Profit that takes at the profits made by the UnitedHealth CEO Stephen Hemsley and the insurance claims UnitedHealth has denied. Chad Terhune of BusinessWeek, your response and why you focused so much in your piece on UnitedHealthcare, why it’s key in the debate around a public option? 

CHAD TERHUNE: Kind of two reasons I focused on UnitedHealth. One is fairly simple: they are the largest in terms of revenue. They are the industry giant. WellPoint has more members, if you go by enrollment, but they are the largest and are a good kind of example for the industry. And then, two, they are different than some other insurance. They’re much more diversified. And if you really look at where health reform is going, kind of the post-reform world—and we will have some type of reform—they are really poised to profit like no other. 

Like I mentioned earlier, they expanded several years ago into government contracts. They are the biggest provider of Medicaid plans around the states, biggest provider of SCHIP, the children’s health insurance plan. They have a whole huge $5 billion unit that’s just dedicated to health coaching and wellness. You know, if someone has diabetes, they get on the phone and work with them and send them emails and do a lot of hand holding. And people go on the factory floor and help companies, and all that’s paid for, you know, through premiums and from employers. They have a Ingenix, which is this huge data-mining unit, you know, tracks people’s prescriptions and claims and everything. 

And just, they are just in a well position, from a corporate point of view, to profit off everything that’s being talked about in reform. This whole idea of comparative effectiveness and what treatments work and which doctors and hospitals are the most efficient, well, UnitedHealthcare tracks all that. They probably have more data on that than anyone else. So just from those points of view, again, going back to their point, this is not necessarily gloom and doom for insurers. There are many ways they can make money off reform. 

And back to the earlier piece, I don’t— can’t comment on the documentary, but you basically had the two views: either your health insurance company is the—some or part of the problem, or they’re part of the solution. And what I’ve found, you know, kind of interesting in this debate, you had United heavily lobbying and forging relationships with many members of Congress, being seen as a valuable source of information and expertise. At the same time, you had many members of Congress grilling them at the congressional hearings, and particularly over two issues that kept coming up. 

And so, United was having to constantly put out these fires where they were being vilified. One was over their Ingenix unit, which got in trouble with the New York attorney general and then later with Senator Rockefeller’s Senate panel over kind of skewing the rates, physicians’ rates, and underpaying claims, you know, billions of dollars, and basically consumers having to pay out more than they should for their medical care. And they were forced through a settlement to end that practice, stop running that database. 

And then, two, their Golden Rule unit, along with some other companies, got called to Congress over the cancellation of policies. Say you or I get cancer or have a very large—have a medical illness with large bills, we file a claim, and then they go back to our application we filled out two years ago and try and cancel us over some technicality, that we didn’t check a certain box. 

So it’s just very odd that they were really getting some major heat in Congress on some of these issues, but at the same time kind of advancing their other issues through lobbying and other means. 

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Chad Terhune, I want to thank you very much for being with us. In that film, Robert Greenwald points out that Hemsley makes $102,000—more than $102,000 an hour. He’s the CEO of UnitedHealthcare. And we want to thank you for being with us, for joining us from Florida, senior writer at BusinessWeek. His piece with Keith Epstein is called “The Health Insurers Have Already Won.”

Interesting email from JFK researcher, Dr. Gary Aguilar:

As you know, I'm a practicing, private physician. As we've seen already with the military-industrial-congressional complex, the Big Agra-congressional complex, the Big Pharma-congressional complex, and, more recently, the Big Banking-congressional complex, the upshot of whatever the govt. does with health care will be to transfer massive amounts of the public's dwindling assets to private healthcare corporations -- insurance companies and hospital corporations.

For in America, it's not 'one man, one vote;' it's 'one dollar, one vote.' And the health care lobby has been spending $1.4 million dollars PER DAY lobbying to ensure that whatever is done by the feds helps them first and foremost.

As a former Ayn Rand objectivist, a Milton Friedmanite (who was my patient), a Young American for Freedom Member, etc. and as a student of Ludwig von Mises(!), I know to what uses von Mises is put nowadays: it's put to scare people from govt so that they'll agree to cede even more public power and more public money to corrupt, powerful, private corporations, health care in this case.

Just think about what's already happened to the country, what with the myriad financial calamities that were caused by "anti-regulatory, free market ideologues." If Adam Smith had been right about that "invisible hand," the house of cards would not have collapsed. But it collapsed because powerful corps got control of the govt. and engineered their own golden parachute while the citizenry was thrown from the plane without a parachute. And to whom did both Bush and Obama turn to salvage our financial train wreck? Why, the same guys who were driving the train when it crashed, that's who.

Two newish books lay this out particularly clearly: Ha-Joon Chang, Ph.D.'s "Bad Samaritan," (he's an economics professor at Cambridge), and James Galbraith, Ph.D.'s "Predator State" (he teaches econ at U. Texas, Austin). Both make the point that private interests now use the power of the state to fleece and impoverish the American public. They've done a helluva job, too.

"For example, according to a series of studies reviewed in the Wall St. Journal, no foe of capitalism, it, and against all "patriotic" beliefs, .. the USA is now tied for DEAD LAST AMONG ALL FIRST WORLD COUNTRIES in one's chances of rising to prosperity if one starts out life poor ..." Sound crazy? Well, check it yourself:

http://www.acces.us/PDF/WSJ.com%20_As_Rich..._Gap_Widens.pdf

And then ask yourself this question: If you have a really excellent public university system in your state - say, a U. Michigan, U. Wisconsin, U. California, etc. - how much did it cost you to go to this university when you were young, as opposed to what it costs now? UCLA Medical School cost me - tuition, room, board, books and supplies - $2,000.00 year in 1974 and I got lots of scholarships and grants that helped. (I came from a very poor family.) Today, the tab is $45,000.00 a year, and few outright grants are given these days.

Inflation correct all you want, but these costs have skyrocketed to the point that there are lots of kids who are capable but don't now go to decent colleges because they can't afford to come out owing 10s of thousands of dollars. And in young doctors's cases, something I know about since I teach at UC San Francisco, young practitioners often begin their careers owing as much as $250,000.00, or even more.

In America, the "free market" isn't free; it's a market that's completely rigged by enormously wealthy and powerful corporations that keep their predations buried behind noble ideals of free markets that have absolutely nothing to do with what actually goes on these days.

Look, if you haven't figured it out already concerning the recent banking bailout, you'll not see what hit you until after the, "pro-capitalism" health care lobby is done with ya.

Best,

Gary

Excellent post by GA, that captures Health Care and the Nation, at large. Capitalism, and the 'Free Market' have become a cancer about to consume the patient's body throughout the USA. The idiots and naive that haven't yet seen it through the mythology, unless they are ungodly rich, will suffer as the rest of us.....

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: On Monday, President Obama gave a speech in Phoenix before the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the nation’s largest veterans group. Obama defended his escalation of the Afghanistan war, which he called, quote, “a war of necessity.” 

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: As I said when I announced this strategy, there will be more difficult days ahead. The insurgency in Afghanistan didn’t just happen overnight, and we won’t defeat it overnight. This will not be quick nor easy. 

But we must never forget, this is not a war of choice, this is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al-Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is fundamental to the defense of our people.


AMY GOODMAN: While President Obama defended his escalation of the war in Afghanistan, in Britain, America’s closest US ally, antiwar sentiment is growing. This week, the number of British troops killed in Afghanistan since 2001 surpassed 200. Yesterday in central London, protesters read the names of the 200 British soldiers, as well as the names of 200 Afghan citizens killed in the war. The demonstration in Whitehall was led by former British MP Tony Benn, currently president of the Stop the War Coalition. 

Tony Benn joins us now from London, a former cabinet minister and the longest-serving MP in the history of the British Labour Party, served for more than half a century. 

Tony Benn, welcome back to Democracy Now! Talk about the reading of the names yesterday in London. 

TONY BENN: Well, it was a solemn occasion, and the names were read. 

But, you see, I think you have to understand the history of this. Britain invaded Afghanistan in 1839, captured Kabul, and was defeated the following year, and 15,000 British troops were killed in the retreat. Britain invaded Afghanistan in 1879. Britain was in Afghanistan in 1919. The Russians were in Afghanistan. I led a delegation to the Russian ambassador in London to protest that. The United States government, President Bush, the first one, funded Osama bin Laden to fight the Russians to get them out of Afghanistan. 

And the situation we’re in now is very straightforward. The United States and NATO, forty countries with 64,000 troops, in eight years have been unable to defeat the Taliban. And this is a Vietnam War for America and for the rest of the—well, for the people involved, soldiers and civilians on both sides, it’s an absolute tragedy. 

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: And Obama defended the war yesterday, calling it “a war of necessity.” Your response to that? 

TONY BENN: Well, I think you just have to ask yourself the question: is it a war on terror, or is it a war on Afghanistan? It’s a war on Afghanistan. And to call it a war on terror just entitles you to do what you like. And I do not think it’s going to succeed. 

The other thing I have in mind is very simple. A few years ago, London was bombed by terrorists. And how did it end—from northern Ireland. How did it end? It ended when we talked to Gerry Adams, who was the IRA leader in prison. Nelson Mandela was denounced as a terrorist by Mrs. Thatcher, and peace came in South Africa when the South African government talked to Mandela, and he came out and became president. I mean, history tells you, and Churchill put it very clearly, draw draw talking is better than war war. And there will have to be negotiations with al-Qaeda and Taliban to secure the end of this conflict. Of that, I have no doubt whatsoever. 

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, Tony Benn, we also wanted to talk to you about the issue of healthcare. Here in the United States— 

TONY BENN: Yes. 

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: —several congressional Democrats rallied around a public healthcare option on Monday, one day after the Obama administration suggested it was prepared to abandon the proposal to attract bipartisan support. Senator John Rockefeller of West Virginia called the public option “a must,” while House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi vowed to ensure the public option stays in the final House bill. Congress member Anthony Weiner of New York said President Obama risks losing around a hundred Democratic votes if the public option is dropped. 

AMY GOODMAN: The Obama administration’s dwindling support for the public option follows weeks of intensive media campaigning from Republicans and right-wing pundits. Part of that campaign has been to denigrate the single-payer systems of foreign countries. In Britain, the US debate over healthcare is being closely watched, and now the political and medical establishment in Britain have launched a spirited defense of the National Health Service in response to attacks on the system by conservative commentators in the United States. 

Tony Benn, you’re a former cabinet minister, longest-serving MP in the history of the British Labour Party. Explain your system in Britain and what the battle looks like to you across the Atlantic in the United States. 

TONY BENN: Well, I mean, for me—and I love, know America. I’m married to an American, known America for seventy years. It’s amazing. I think most people in Britain just regard it as being uncivilized for a great, rich country to ignore the health of 47 million people. And I don’t say that as an insult; we just don’t understand it. 

It was set up in Britain in 1948, sixty-one years ago. And I have with me the statement made by the government at the time. “Your new National Health Service begins on the 5th of July. […] How do you get it? 

“It will provide you with all medical, dental, and nursing care. Everyone—rich or poor, man, woman or child—can use it or any part of it. There are no charges, except for a few special items. There are no 
insurance qualifications. But it is not a ‘charity’. You are all paying for it, […] as taxpayers, and it will relieve your money worries in time of illness.” 

And, I mean, my family has benefited enormously. I had an operation a few days ago in London. I’ve got a pacemaker put in under the Health Service. My wife died of cancer and for four years had the most brilliant healthcare. 

And I suppose one way of looking at it is this: there’s a lot unemployment in the United States, as there is in Britain, and one way of creating jobs would be to build hospitals, recruit nurses, train doctors, and then meet the health needs of the country, as well. 

I just don’t understand what’s being said. Well, I do understand, because I know the people who are saying it. But it’s absolutely no relation to the Health Service in Britain or the needs of the United States. 

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, Tony Benn, I wanted to get your response to the comments of British member of European Parliament, Dan Hannan. He was interviewed on several news networks earlier this year, criticizing the British healthcare system. This is what he had to say on Fox News. He was interviewed by anchor Sean Hannity. 

SEAN HANNITY: Can you explain in—with some specificity, why you are giving such a dire warning to the people of the United States? 

DANIEL HANNAN: Because you’re our friends, and if you see a friend about to make a terrible mistake, you try and warn him. And we’ve lived through this mistake. We’ve lived through this mistake for sixty years now. 

It began with the best of intentions. It began because people thought it was wrong for those who weren’t well off and couldn’t afford the best healthcare to be treated differently, and everyone felt, well, this is—it’s kind of a nice togetherness kind of solidarity thing if we all take part in this experiment.


But the reality is, it hasn’t worked. It has made people iller. We spend a lot of money, and we get very bad results. You look at survival rates for cancer or heart disease, we are well down on all the leagues. We have very few doctors. We disincentivize people from practicing medicine in this country. A lot of our best and brightest doctors emigrate. A lot of them go to North America, because there’s no market. There’s nothing that helps them.


And, of course, the government, for a long time, would always say, “Well, we can just make this work a little bit more if we spend more,” so the current government has almost increased by about 80 percent spending on healthcare. But, of course, as long as you have a socialist system, no amount of extra spending is going to rescue it. And so, there was an absolutely neat example of the unplanned consequences of socialism.


The government decreed centrally that all general practitioners were going to get a big pay raise. Well, doctors are human beings. They understandably started working shorter hours.


SEAN HANNITY: Yeah.


DANIEL HANNAN: So, the effect of this massive injection of government cash—


SEAN HANNITY: Well—


DANIEL HANNAN: —wasn’t just to be useless; it actually made it worse.


AMY GOODMAN: That is the—those are the comments of the British member of European Parliament Dan Hannan, not to be confused with the man who’s interviewing him, Hannity, on Fox. Tony Benn, your response? 

TONY BENN: Well, I just don’t recognize it as the Health Service that I know and use. I mean, the number of doctors has doubled. A waiting list is down to very little for people. And talk to anyone in Britain who’s used the Health Service—I must say, I have one suspicion: I don’t believe that man has ever used the National Health Service. He uses private health insurance. Nobody who uses the Health Service, as all my family have done, have ever, ever had criticism of that character. 

And, you see, I suppose it’s really basically a question of, do you regard the health of the nation as a national interest? Now, in the United States, taxpayers pay for the education of children. Does that make it socialized education? The police are paid for by the taxpayers. Does that make it a socialized police force? The fire services are public services. Does that mean they are socialized fire services? You see, this is just the language of very, very rich people who don’t want to make a contribution for the healthcare of others. 

I’m afraid it’s getting an end of it, the whole argument. And the member of Parliament you quoted is being denounced by his own leader. And Mrs. Thatcher said the “Health Service is safe in our hands. And when she said that—and she was the most right-wing leader we’ve had in Britain for many years—when she said that about the Health Service, that gives you the clearest recommendation I can think of for a right-wing American audience. 

AMY GOODMAN: Tony Benn, finally, any thoughts on the comparison of the debate you’re seeing today with what happened before the British—the National Health Service was ushered in in Britain? Are you seeing an echo of it? 

TONY BENN: Yes, in a way. I mean, some of the doctors were opposed to it, but they all came around. Some of the consultants said, “We don’t want to be civil servants.” But they’re not civil servants. You had a little bit of it. 

But I’ll tell you what really changed it, and it takes you back to the 1930s. We had mass unemployment, as you did in the United States. And I was a pilot in the Royal Air Force in the war, and we were discussing on a troop ship coming home once how we would deal with the problems of unemployment. And one lad got up, and he said something I’ve never forgotten. He said, “In the 1930s we had mass unemployment, but we don’t have unemployment when we’re killing Germans.” He said, “If you can have full employment by killing Germans, why can’t you have full employment by building hospitals, building schools, recruiting teachers, recruiting nurses, recruiting doctors?” And that’s how we got it. 

We took the view that a government had a responsibility to focus on the needs of a nation in peacetime in the way in which it does in wartime. And if that principle is followed, then all the ideological language can be set aside. You’ve got to judge a country by whether its needs are met and not just by whether some people make a profit. I’ve never met Mr. Dow Jones, and I’m sure he works very, very hard with his averages. We get them every hour. But I don’t think the happiness of a nation is decided by the share values in Wall Street. 

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you, Tony Benn, very much for being with us, former cabinet minister, longest-serving MP in the history of the Labour Party, also president of the Stop the War Coalition, speaking to us from London. 

As we wrap our British segment, before we move on to Canada’s healthcare system, by repeating that story that many Britons were surprised to read a recent editorial in the American newspaper Investor’s Business Daily. The editorial stated, “People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the UK, where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.” Well, Hawking was in fact born in Britain and has lived there his whole life. The newspaper was forced to run a correction. Hawking said, “I wouldn’t be here today if it were not for the NHS.” That’s the National Health Service of Britain. 

This is Democracy Now! When we come back from our break, we’ll be in Toronto to look at Canada’s healthcare system. Stay with us.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: We continue our look at healthcare in foreign countries. We’re going to turn now to Canada. In a moment, we’ll go to Toronto to hear from physician and health policy analyst Dr. Michael Rachlis. But first, we turn to the words of Tommy Douglas, a Canadian politician who helped usher in Canada’s single-payer system.

As premier of Saskatchewan, Douglas pioneered a number of progressive policies there, including the expansion of public utilities, unionization and public auto insurance. But his biggest achievement was the creation of universal health insurance, called Medicare. It passed in Saskatchewan in 1962, guaranteeing hospital care for all residents. The rest of Canada soon followed, province by province.

In 1983, three years before his death, Tommy Douglas spoke about healthcare at the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, his longtime political party.

TOMMY DOUGLAS: When you go back to your constituency and you run into somebody who says, “Oh, it’s a good idea for you soft-hearted humanitarians, but we can’t afford it,” let me give you a simple statistic, which you can put down on a piece of paper and carry in your hand. And that is that our friends in the United States are spending nine percent of their gross national product—and they get a higher per capita gross national product than we do—they spend nine percent of their gross national product on healthcare, and 34 million of their people have no healthcare coverage. And in Canada, we spend seven percent of our gross national product, and every man, woman and child in Canada is covered under Medicare.

If you want a two-tiered health program, then just continue the way we’re going. And I remind you that in this movement, we pledged ourselves fifty years ago that we would provide healthcare for every man, woman and child, irrespective of their color, their race or their potential status, and, by God, we’re going to do it!


AMY GOODMAN: That was Canadian politician Tommy Douglas speaking in 1983. Eleven years later, a nationwide poll conducted by the CBC earned Tommy Douglas the title of “The Greatest Canadian.”

Well, let’s look at this country, the United States, America, 2009. Eighteen thousand people have died in one year, an average of almost fifty a day. Who’s killing them? To investigate, President Obama might be tempted to call on Jack Bauer, the fictional rogue intelligence agent from the hit TV series 24, who’s invariably employing torture and a host of other illegal tactics to help the President fight terrorism. But terrorism is not the culprit here; it’s lack of adequate healthcare. So maybe the President’s solution isn’t Jack Bauer, but rather the actor who plays him.

Yes, that’s right. The star of 24 is played by Kiefer Sutherland, whose family has very deep connections in healthcare reform. That is, in Canada. Take a listen to Kiefer Sutherland.

KIEFER SUTHERLAND: Hi, my name is Kiefer Sutherland. Many of you may know me [inaudible], but there’s something in my background that you may not know, something which I am very proud of. I am also a grandson of the late Tommy Douglas, a premier who brought enormous change to Saskatchewan and the rest of Canada.


AMY GOODMAN: Yes, that’s Kiefer Sutherland, the grandson of the late Tommy Douglas, the pioneering Canadian politician, the premier of Saskatchewan who helped usher in the modern Canadian healthcare system.

We turn right now in Toronto to a doctor who is very important in this system, Dr. Michael Rachlis, physician and health policy analyst, also adjunct professor in health policy studies at the University of Toronto. His latest book, Prescription for Excellence: How Innovation is Saving Canada’s Health Care System.

We welcome you to Democracy Now! What does our debate look like on your side of the border up north, Dr. Rachlis?

DR. MICHAEL RACHLIS: I think I can say that across the political spectrum in Canada, almost across the political spectrum, we’re quite appalled at the level of the debate in the United States and, in particular, what’s being said about our country’s healthcare system.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, when Tommy Douglas pushed through universal healthcare, single payer, in Saskatchewan, he had a major opponent: the US American Medical Association, who led a strike of Canadian doctors in Saskatchewan. Despite this more than three-week strike, universal healthcare, single-payer system in Canada, was instituted, first in Saskatchewan, then adopted all over. Explain the system as you have it today.

DR. MICHAEL RACHLIS: Yes, and I think that there are many misunderstandings, unfortunately, about our system. And I should make it clear that my intention certainly isn’t to push our system on your country. You’ll have to make your own choices. But I am trying to clear up some of the misconceptions.

Our system evolved over the same time as you were making decisions about your system in the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s. We initially had hospital insurance in Saskatchewan under Douglas in the 1940s. Then, in 1957, the federal government brought in a hospital insurance program, which led the way for other programs after it, in that our federal government is not responsible for healthcare. It is the provinces, by our constitution. But the federal government provided money to the provinces, if they met certain terms and conditions for their insurance programs. And one of them was universality. All the provinces bought into the federal hospital program in ’57. And then that—because Saskatchewan then had some money from the federal government for their hospital program, they were able to push ahead to medical insurance in 1962, which wasn’t as popular with physicians as the hospital insurance program, which is why, as you mentioned, physicians did go on strike. But the strike was settled. And a federal government royal commission in 1964 recommended a Saskatchewan style of medical insurance for the whole country, and the federal government passed their medical insurance legislation in ’66, enacted it in ’68, and then all provinces had bought in by ’71.

In parallel, in your country, Truman almost launched a national health insurance program in the late ’40s, defeated by a concentrated AMA lobby. And then, in the 1960s, you grappled with whether to go to a universal program, but ended up with two programs for those populations that the private insurance system wouldn’t cover—the elderly and the very poor—your Medicare and Medicaid programs.

So, in Canada, our national health insurance program, again, is a mandate from the federal government that if the provinces want the federal money, they have to meet certain terms and conditions. But as opposed to being so-called socialized medicine like in Britain—excuse me—where the government employs the doctors directly and owns the hospitals through the National Health Service, in Canada almost all doctors are in private practice. And although it varies from province to province, in the largest province, Ontario, with almost 40 percent of the population, all our 160 hospitals are private, although not for-profit, entities.

And the government program pays for care for whatever physician or hospital you choose. And that’s another myth in the US debate these days, that we can’t choose our doctors or hospitals. In fact, we have completely free choice of physicians in this country. And wherever you go, you take your Medicare card with you, and then the government will pay the bill.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: And Dr. Michael Rachlis, you recently penned an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, where you outlined five lessons of the Canadian system for the US system. Can you go through them?

DR. MICHAEL RACHLIS: Yes, that the first couple of lessons have to do with the—simply, it’s economics 101. That is, that if you have a single-payer system, like Canada has—and virtually every other wealthy country, as well, has some variation of either a national health system like the UK or, more commonly, a national health insurance program like France and the Nordic countries, etc.—that if you have a single-payer system, when you don’t have to have thousands of actuaries to set premiums or thousands of lawyers in your country to deny care, there’s huge savings on administration, both within the insurance system but also in doctors’ offices.

A recent report in the US said over six percent of all doctors’ revenues are spent on billing and reconciliation. The Massachusetts General Hospital has more people working in their billings and reconciliation department than we have at the Ontario Health Insurance Plan head office to administer health insurance for 13 million people. So, all through the system, there is increased administration.

And so, Canada spends ten percent of its gross domestic product of our national economy now on healthcare. You folks are spending 16 percent. Half of the difference is due to the increased administration of insurance, and the other half is due to the fact that a single-payer system can negotiate much lower prices than multiple payers in your system. And so, about half of the rest of the difference is due to higher prices.

In fact, Canadians get more of some services than Americans. We get fewer of some high-tech services, but even in the high-tech end, like for lung transplants, Toronto is an international center. We do more lung transplant surgery per capita than the US.

So, the first couple of lessons would be that single payer or a national health insurance program is going to be cheaper, because it will have lower administrative overhead and, secondly, because we’ll have lower prices. And then, that, too, that a national health insurance program, or single payer, also means that everybody is covered.

And even the problems with Canada’s health system—and we do have them. We do have longer wait lists than you folks have for a lot of elective care. Notwithstanding some of the high-profile cases in your country of Canadians who apparently couldn’t get care for urgent conditions, they’re just not true. Canadians who have urgent conditions do get care right away, but we wait longer for elective care than Americans. But on the other hand, Americans wait longer for an appointment with a specialist or elective surgery than do the French or the Germans. And so, even the problems in Canada’s system, I think, are illustrative to you folks, because a lot of our problems, like the wait times that we have, have nothing to do with our national health insurance system.

And, in fact, using a process, improvement techniques that have been pioneered by Americans, largely, through the National Institute of Medicine and the Boston-based Institute for Healthcare Improvement, in some parts of Canada the last few years, wait times have plummeted. In Toronto, for example, it was common for people to wait up to a year for cataract surgery or joint replacement surgery, up until four or five years ago. Now there are assessment centers that people can refer themselves to. They can see a specialist quickly. And from the first phone call to getting their eye surgery or joint replacement surgery, now is only taking something like four to six weeks in Toronto, without much more money, but simply with process improvement in healthcare.

So our good points, I think, are certainly illustrative for you that they demonstrate what any economist teaching a first-year class could tell you, which is that single payer will reduce administration, administrative costs. And then, even our problems, like waits for care, are illustrative, because they show that they’re not really due to the fact that we have national health insurance; they’re much more due to problems within the system and the way that administrators and doctors, in particular, have organized their practices.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: And Dr. Rachlis, we just have about a minute left. But you raised this very interesting point about the issue of choice. We hear a lot in this country about how we want to have free choice of doctors, but it’s actually Americans who are restricted by these—having to choose within your plan for a doctor.

DR. MICHAEL RACHLIS: Yes, that’s right. I mean, I’ll give you an example. A cousin of mine in Toronto a few years ago was told that he needed a gastroscopy examination, examination of his stomach through an endoscopic tube. He was originally told by his family doctor that the usual specialist she referred people to would take fifteen weeks. But he used a public website for the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Ontario and found a gastroneurologist who could do his procedure the following week. His family doctor made the referral, and he had his procedure. So you can choose any doctor you wish in Canada. They might not always be able to see you, but we have completely free choice of care. And as you mention, many Americans do not these days.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Michael Rachlis, finally, the answer to the question that is continually posed by those who oppose any kind of public plan, and that is, having a bureaucrat between the doctor and the patient. Your response to that?

DR. MICHAEL RACHLIS: That there certainly isn’t the kind of formal rationing that people have been describing in your country. Or we don’t have death panels in this country, for example. That the decision about treatment is made actually just between the doctor and the patient. The insurance plan is virtually never involved. And ironically, in your country, it’s the private insurers that often stand between patients and physicians.

You have to finance healthcare some way. And then there have to be some decisions made about what’s covered and how you’re going to organize those services. In our country, we made the choice to have it as a public insurance plan and to make those decisions democratically. And somewhat ironically, in your country, those decisions, they’re left to somebody, but in this case they’re left to private insurers who appear to be a whole lot less accountable than our elected politicians are in this country.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Michael Rachlis, we want to thank you for being with us. His latest book, Prescription for Excellence: How Innovation is Saving Canada’s Health Care System.

It seems that Barack Obama might be in retreat:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/1...c-option-reform

Barack Obama faced a backlash from the left today after his administration signalled retreat over the introduction of a government-run national health plan.

Progressives dubbed the move 'treachery' and 'betrayal'.

Obama will continue to push for reform this year but the new healthcare provision is now likely to be run by private insurance companies rather than by the federal government, which had been his preferred option.

The apparent White House shift brought to the surface the divisions between Democrats over reform. Left-wingers expressed sadness and anger that Obama appeared to be backing away from the public option while party conservatives claimed that it had never been a realistic option anyway.

The softening of the White House position comes after weeks of sustained, noisy and disruptive protests across the country against his health plan, much of it orchestrated by the right.

Howard Dean, who chaired the Democratic party from 2005 to this year, today emerged as the most high-profile party member to voice concern about dropping the public option. Interviewed on TV network CBS, he said: "You can't really have reform without a public option. If you don't want to have the public option … just do a little insurance reform … and then we'll tackle health reform another time. But let's not pretend we're doing reform without a public option."

Dean's comments reflect the debate within the Democratic party between those who argue that Obama should not back down in the face of the Republican campaign and those who say that it is better to compromise - to get half of what they want rather than nothing.

Obama's healthcare plan, aimed at extending insurance coverage to 46 million Americans who at present have none, has produced one of the most divisive debates in the US since the Vietnam war. Obama, on a visit to Phoenix, Arizona, today was greeted by a crowd in the streets loudly expressing support or opposition to the healthcare plan, even though he was due to speak to military veterans about Iraq and Afghanistan.

The softening by the Obama administration over the public option was signalled by the US health secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, who yesterday said it was "not the essential element" of the healthcare plan.

The White House insisted that this did not amount to a change: Obama continued to think the public option was the best one but he had always been flexible about how to achieve his healthcare goals.

The group Healthcare for America Now, which has been paying for ads in support of the Obama plan, today expressed its continued support for the public option. Jacki Schechner, a spokeswoman, said: "We believe - and the president continues to say – that a public health insurance option is the best way to inject true competition and choice into the marketplace."

The group's blog reflected some of the liberal anger. One commenter, identifying herself as Mary, said the alternative appears to be public subsidies for insurance companies. "I feel literally sick over this betrayal," she said.

Healthcare for America Now has not given up the fight and today announced spending on more television ads targeting the states of members of Congress opposed to reform.

House Democrats today insisted they will not drop the public provision in their bill, at least not in the short term. The Senate, where most of the opposition is coming from, has not yet produced a bill. After both chambers pass bills, the two get together for horsetrading to produce a common bill.

Obama's administration is likely to be judged on whether he can get a health bill on the statute books - he sees it as the centrepiece of his first term. He is to continue the fight throughout the remainder of this month and into next. Although he is off on holiday with his family to Martha's Vineyard in New England next week, he is to break in to it to continue campaigning.

One of Obama's biggest problems is not the Republicans but conservatives in his own party, the so-called Blue Dog Democrats, opposed to the public option. One of them, Senator Kent Conrad from North Dakota, said on Fox News yesterday that the public option was never on the cards: "The fact of the matter is there are not the votes in the United States Senate for a public option. There never have been."

Instead, he proposed creation of cooperatives in which members could negotiate coverage with private insurance companies. But this leaves many liberals cold as they regard it as giving more money to insurance companies, detested for their high profits and patchy performance in paying out on claims.

Video expose on the British NHS.

http://www.larouchepac.com/lpactv?nid=11514

Terry, thank you for posting this. I now know that I will never take seriously anything that comes from the LaRouche organization. To give just one example of the logic of this video: Adolf Hitler was in favour of a National Health Service type system so therefore you can use terms such as Nazi-NHS and Nazi-Obama. Even Sarah Palin is not as daft as this. It is clearly the political movement for the political illiterates. I am sending the video around to friends so we can have a good laugh at LaRouche organization.

Dr, Gary,

The concentration of wealth purchased political power in the US was turned back for a brief time, and workers gained quickly and dramatically in so many ways....overtime pay after 8 hours of work in a day, and after 40 hours work in a week. Decent wages and medical, dental, retirement and vacation benefits were succcessfully negotiated via federally enforced collective bargaining with employers, These types of benefits and paid holidays eventually became widespread compensation models for the majority of US employees, even though they did not belong to unions.

For a time, wealth in the US stopped it's ever increasing concentration into ever fewer hands, and actually reversed noticeably. Big wealth and it's right wing republican party repealed the stronger provisions of the 1935 unionization laws, and republican presidents like GW Bush cynically stacked the labor laws enforcement board, the NLRB, with anti-union hacks as described below.

Too many American voters have demonstrated that they don't possess the discernment to vote in their own best interests, and it shows. Clinton was and Obama is a president concerned primarily with convincing large corporations that it is worth spending most of their lobbying and political influence dollars on them, vs. spending on their republican challengers. These presidents commit to giving their corporate benefactors their moneys worth at the expense of the best interests of their democratic constituents. The top priority is keeping corporate donations in democratic campaign coffers, so as to weaken the republicans.

Here is some history:





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John,

I do not agree with your "simplistic" review of the video. What I took away from the video was Obama's healthcare proposal contained the same call for "medical rationing" by an independent commission that Hitler used. That this commission would decide who gets healthcare and what kind of healthcare. This is identical to Hitler's T-4 boards.

This is also identical to the British system. Further that Simon Stevens (Health Policy Director to Tiny Blair) was the "KEY ADVISOR" to Obama prior to his June 1st, 2009 Healthcare reform initiative. Stevens said that NICE could be applied to Medicaid. There is your "foreign influence" of American policy, for example.

Here's a recent article defending the British NICE
http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/200...-american-lies/

The Wall Street Journal editorial page described NICE as a “rationing board” and wrote: “Americans should understand how NICE works because under ObamaCare it will eventually be coming to a hospital near you.”

Dr. Rawlins noted that defending the N.H.S. had become a political badge of honor in the United Kingdom. “These attacks from the U.S. have been good for the British,” he said. In speeches, Dr. Rawlins routinely tweaks the United States for its profligate health care spending and poor results.

Now from December 2008 here is an article on NICE "cost/benefit" analysis

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/healthlaw...-costbenef.html

When Bruce Hardy’s kidney cancer spread to his lung, his doctor recommended an expensive new pill from Pfizer. But Mr. Hardy is British, and the British health authorities refused to buy the medicine. His wife has been distraught. . . .

If the Hardys lived in the United States or just about any European country other than Britain, Mr. Hardy would most likely get the drug, although he might have to pay part of the cost. A clinical trial showed that the pill, called Sutent, delays cancer progression for six months at an estimated treatment cost of $54,000. But at that price, Mr. Hardy’s life is not worth prolonging, according to a British government agency, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. The institute, known as NICE, has decided that Britain, except in rare cases, can afford only £15,000, or about $22,750, to save six months of a citizen’s life. British authorities, after a storm of protest, are reconsidering their decision on the cancer drug and others.

Note: "But at that price, Mr. Hardy's LIFE is not worth prolonging, according to a British government agency, NICE.

There in a nusthell is why LaRouche identifies the British idea of rationing healthcare with Adolf Hitler. And this is what the British wish to "export" to the United States?

Further in the article we find this:

To arrest this trend, the United States needs to adopt at least some of NICE’s methods, said Dr. Mark McClellan and Dr. Sean Tunis, who served earlier in the Bush administration as, respectively, administrator and chief medical officer of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Dr. Tunis said he spent a lot of time in government “learning about NICE and trying to adopt the processes and mechanisms they used, and we just couldn’t.” That’s because the idea of using price to determine which drugs or devices Medicare or Medicaid provides has provoked fierce protests. But Dr. McClellan said the American government would soon have no choice.



How valuable to his masters will President Obama become if he fails in pushing through this Nazi medical policy of "useless eaters" and "lives unworthy to be lived" ?

http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2008.../26-35_3548.pdf

A simple plan to at least relax the skyrocketing costs of health care would be to cap medical malpractice and purge the system of the scum ambulance chasers who prey on people' greed.

In Florida we have a big problem with OB/GYN"s leaving the field altogether because of runaway malpractice insurance and the foaming-at-the-mouth lawyers.

As for the public option, I am probably one of the more fiscally conservative people on here and did not vote for Obama. However I think his public option is a potentially viable plan and is being dragged through the mud by talkign heads and their sycophants. The reality is that something is needed, and fast.

And finally, the funniest thing to watch in the debates is when protesters yell "Get the government's hands off my Medicare". Hello?!?!?!

Let me first give you some background history to our NHS before addressing the nonsense put forward in the video.

In the first-half of the 20th century, most of the major industrialized nations introduced social welfare legislation. This came about because of the pressure from the working-class who had recently been granted the vote. This was especially true of women voters (it had been the policy of virtually all the women’s suffrage organizations).

In 1902 George Barnes, General Secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, formed the National Committee of Organised Labour for Old Age Pension. Barnes spent the next three years travelling the country urging this social welfare reform. The measure was extremely popular and was an important factor in Barnes being able to defeat Andrew Bonar Law , the Conservative cabinet minister in the 1906 General Election.

David Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Liberal government led by Herbert Asquith in 1908, was also an opponent of the Poor Law in Britain. He was determined to take action that in his words would "lift the shadow of the workhouse from the homes of the poor". He believed the best way of doing this was to guarantee an income to people who were too old to work. In 1908 Lloyd George introduced the Old Age Pensions Act that provided between 1s. and 5s. a week to people over seventy. These pensions were only paid to citizens on incomes that were not over 12s.

To pay for these pensions David Lloyd George had to raise government revenues by an additional £16 million a year. In 1909 Lloyd George announced what became known as the People's Budget. This included increases in taxation. Whereas people on lower incomes were to pay 9d in the pound, those on annual incomes of over £3,000 had to pay 1s. 2d. in the pound. Lloyd George also introduced a new supertax of 6d. in the pound for those earning £5000 a year. Other measures included an increase in death duties on the estates of the rich and heavy taxes on profits gained from the ownership and sale of property.

This was of course highly unpopular with the rich and so Lloyd George became a victim of the capitalist media. See for example, this cartoon from Punch Magazine (see below):

The Conservatives, who had a large majority in the House of Lords, objected to this attempt to redistribute wealth, and made it clear that they intended to block these proposals. After a long struggle with the House of Lords, Lloyd George finally got his budget through parliament. As a result of this conflict, the Liberal Government passed the 1911 Parliament Act that restricted the power of the House of Lords to block legislation passed by the House of Commons.

Lloyd George's next reform was the 1911 National Insurance Act. This gave the British working classes the first contributory system of insurance against illness and unemployment. All wage-earners between sixteen and seventy had to join the health scheme. Each worker paid 4d a week and the employer added 3d. and the state 2d. In return for these payments, free medical attention, including medicine was given. Those workers who contributed were also guaranteed 7s. a week for fifteen weeks in any one year, when they were unemployed.

Lloyd George's reforms were strongly criticised and some Conservatives accused him of being a socialist. There was no doubt that he had been heavily influenced by Fabian Society pamphlets on social reform that had been written by Beatrice Webb, Sidney Webb and George Bernard Shaw in the early 1900s. However, he had also been influenced by non-socialist writers such Seebohm Rowntree and Charles Booth.

Although most Labour Party members of the House of Commons had welcomed Lloyd George's reforms, politicians such as James Keir Hardie, Fred Jowett and George Lansbury argued that the level of benefits were far too low. They also complained that the pensions should be universal and disliked what was later to be called the Means Test aspect of these reforms.

Other European countries followed Britain’s example and by the 1930s all the major advanced industrial countries had created the basis of their own Welfare State. Although the rich objected to the higher-taxes they had to pay, these measures were highly popular with the vast majority of the population. Even so, it did not go far enough and poor people died in their thousands because of inadequate health-care provided by the government.

The government argued that because of the “great depression” the country could not afford these reforms. However, there was a clear understanding that once the economy improved a much more substantial welfare-state would be introduced.

During the Second World War the government became concerned about the commitment of the British people to winning the war. Many remembered the government of the First World War promising a “land fit for heroes” if we won the conflict. It was a promise that was never kept. This time Winston Churchill realised that the government had to make specific promises in order to have the desired effect on the British people.

Churchill asked Sir William Beveridge to write a report on the best ways of helping people on low incomes. In December 1942 Beveridge published a report that proposed that all people of working age should pay a weekly contribution. In return, benefits would be paid to people who were sick, unemployed, retired or widowed. Beveridge argued that this system would provide a minimum standard of living "below which no one should be allowed to fall". Beveridge also suggested the idea of a National Health Service.

During the 1945 General Election, Winston Churchill, promised to implement the Beveridge Report. So did the Labour Party. In a radio election broadcast in May 1945 he made an attack on Labour’s welfare state plans: “I must tell you that a socialist policy is abhorrent to British ideas on freedom. There is to be one State, to which all are to be obedient in every act of their lives. This State, once in power, will prescribe for everyone: where they are to work, what they are to work at, where they may go and what they may say, what views they are to hold, where their wives are to queue up for the State ration, and what education their children are to receive. A socialist state could not afford to suffer opposition - no socialist system can be established without a political police. They (the Labour government) would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo.”

These comments are not unlike those being made by right-wing Republicans today. Churchill’s comments backfired as the British people wanted the introduction of a welfare state. His speech confirmed that the Conservatives were not committed to implementing the Beveridge Report.

Clement Attlee, the leader of the Labour Party responded the following night: "The Prime Minister made much play last night with the rights of the individual and the dangers of people being ordered about by officials. I entirely agree that people should have the greatest freedom compatible with the freedom of others. There was a time when employers were free to work little children for sixteen hours a day. I remember when employers were free to employ sweated women workers on finishing trousers at a penny halfpenny a pair. There was a time when people were free to neglect sanitation so that thousands died of preventable diseases. For years every attempt to remedy these crying evils was blocked by the same plea of freedom for the individual. It was in fact freedom for the rich and slavery for the poor. Make no mistake, it has only been through the power of the State, given to it by Parliament, that the general public has been protected against the greed of ruthless profit-makers and property owners."

The result was the Labour Party had a landside victory (393 seats compared to 197 for the Conservatives). Over the next five years the Labour government fully implemented the Welfare State. This included the National Insurance Act in 1946 that created the structure of the Welfare State. The legislation instituted a comprehensive state health service, effective from 5th July 1948. The Act provided for compulsory contributions for unemployment, sickness, maternity and widows' benefits and old age pensions from employers and employees, with the government funding the balance.

People in work, except married women, paid 4s 11d a week in National Insurance contributions. For the average worker, this amounted to nearly 5 per cent of their income. James Griffiths, the new Minister of National Insurance, claimed that it was "the best and cheapest insurance policy offered to the British people, of any people anywhere."

Winston Churchill and the Tories fought these measures every step of the way. They were supported by the private insurance health companies that stood to lose most from this system (as is the case in the United States today). However, the Labour Party had such a large majority in the House of Commons that they were able to introduce the National Health Service.

At the next election Churchill had to promise that he would leave the National Health Service alone. Every leader of the Conservative Party has had to follow this policy. The maker of the LaRouche suggests that David Cameron’s defence of the NHS is some sort of conspiracy. He is just doing what every Tory leader has done since the 1950 General Election. It would be impossible for any Tory to gain power without convincing the electorate that the NHS would function in the same way as it does under Labour. Without this assurance he cannot win the next election. That is an example of just how much the British value the NHS.

The video attempts to resurrect the arguments put forward by Winston Churchill in 1945 (dropped of course by the next election as he realised that the British public would not be fooled by such daft arguments).

Reference is made several times to Hitler’s T4 program that was introduced in October 1939. The LaRouche organization claims that the T4 program is similar to the way the NHS works. Therefore, the video goes onto to use phrases such as “Nazi NHS” and Obama is described as advocating “Hitlerian health reforms”.

Of course, people in Britain find this kind of attack deeply offensive. My father, like millions of other British citizens, fought the Nazis from 1939. We were not like the Americans who only decided they did not like fascism until after they were bombed at Pearl Harbor.

The video does not give us any details of Hitler’s T4 program. This is understandable as it has nothing to do with the NHS or Obama’s health-care reforms. In October 1939, Hitler produced details of the T4 program under the title, “The Destruction of Lives Unworthy of Life”.

The camouflage organization created for the medical killing of adults was known as the Reich Work Group of Sanatoriums and Nursing Homes. It operated from the Berlin Chancellery, at Tiergarten 4, hence the "T4" code name. In time, word of the Nazi T4 program (medical killing on a vast scale) filtered down into the general population, and resistance began to emerge. Himmler argued: “If operation T4 had been entrusted to the SS, things would have happened differently, because when the Fuehrer entrusts us with a job, we know how to deal with it correctly, without causing useless uproar among the people.”

Early in 1941, Hitler agreed to let Himmler use T4 personnel and facilities to rid the camps of “those most seriously ill, physically and mentally”. This became known as “prisoner euthanasia”. Hitler gave orders on 24th August 1941 to bring an end to T4. What was discontinued was only the visible dimension of the project: the large-scale gassing of patients. T4 officially ceased as a program, but that turned out to be still another deception. Widespread killing continued in a second phase, sometimes referred to in Nazi documents as “wild euthanasia” because doctors could now act on their own initiative concerning who would live or die. As you can see, T4 has nothing to do with the NHS or Obama's health-care policies.

For more information on this I suggest you read Robert Jay Lifton’s “The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide” (1986)

Several times the video refers to NICE as being the organization that administers the “British Nazi health-care system”. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) is the independent organisation responsible for providing national guidance on the promotion of good health and the prevention and treatment of ill health. According to the video it is NICE that decides who is to live or die in Britain. I image this is reference to one of the roles that NICE plays in the NHS:

“NICE is asked to look at particular drugs and devices when there is confusion or uncertainty over the value of a drug or device or when prescribing practices vary across the country - so that patients may be receiving different prescribed treatments, depending on where they happen to live, rather than on the state of their health.”

The role of NICE is to look into the claims made by the multinational drug companies. For example, over the last few years these corporations have claimed that they have developed a new drug that helps deal with a particular health problem. These drugs are nearly always incredibly expensive. For example, the cost of this drug for a patient could amount to as much as £100,000 a year. Obviously, the NHS has to consider if it can afford to prescribe such drugs. NICE has upset several multinational drug companies by advising NHS doctors not to prescribe these drugs. There is nothing to stop doctors from prescribing private patients these drugs. Of course, this rarely happens as the private health insurance companies refuse to pay for these drugs. That is why it is so important for these drugs companies to persuade NICE to give their approval so that they can fleece the taxpayer.

The video uses the testimony of some patients complaining about the NHS. Any large institution will not satisfy all its customers. As I have posted earlier, my 95 year old mother has had marvelous treatment from the NHS (she is old enough to remember what health-care was like before the NHS was introduced in 1948). My wife also received excellent treatment for 12 years while suffering from cancer.

The NHS is far from being perfect. It is under-funded and I would like to see more money spent on health-care and less on nuclear weapons and the invasion and occupation of foreign countries. However, as a means of protecting people, regardless of income, it takes some beating. Anyway, it appears to be far superior to the one that exists in the United States. For example, the World Health Organisation ranks Britain's healthcare as 18th in the world, while the US is in 37th place.

John, I couldn't have put it better myself. The wild accusations being flung about by American conservatives during the "debate" regarding health care reform would be laughable were it not for the fact that some of the more gullible members of the American public appear to have been taken in by them. Obama's popularity is, apparently, shrinking, and he seems to be backtracking on some aspects of his promised health care program

This video explains in detail the sudden "backtracking" with regards to Obama's healthcare reforms.

http://www.larouchepac.com/lpactv?nid=11544

One Of Every 6 People Who Die In The UK Have Been Euthanized

Sept. 3 (LPAC)--

As reported in the Daily Telegraph in an article
entitled "Sentenced to death on the NHS," 16.5 percent, or one of
every 6 people, who died in the United Kingdom from 2007-2008,
had been subjected to "involuntary euthanasia." As Lyndon
LaRouche commented today, the fact that the truth is finally
coming out about the British healthcare policy, which is the
model for Obama's Nazi legislation, is the result of the fight
that LaRouche has led in the United States. This report comes at
the point that Obama's health care policy has been thoroughly
exposed in the U.S. and Obama is desperately trying to revive it.
The Daily Telegraph published a letter to the editor by
doctors and experts denouncing the NICE program called "Liverpool
Care Pathway," which was designed by the Marie Curie hospice in
Liverpool working with a team at the Royal Liverpool and
Broadgreen University Hospitals Trust. It was originally
developed as a way to care for cancer patients towards the end of
their life, but has been adapted to apply to all patients no
matter what their illness.
The signers of the letter denounce the program as giving
premature death sentences to patients by denying them fluids,
nutrition, medicine and treatment after making a determination
that they are close to death, a determination that is often
wrong. This program was recommended as a model by the NICE in
2004. It has been adopted nationwide and more the 300 hospitals,
130 hospices and 540 care homes in England currently use the
system.
The date 2004 is significant, because it means that the
program was put into effect by NICE during the regime of Tony
Blair. Blair's healthcare advisor from 2000-2004 was Simon
Stevens, who is now with United Health Care in the U.S., which
has the exclusive franchise to provide insurance for AARP
members, and is a strong supporter of the Obama plan.
The program is denounced because patients are wrongly put on
the pathway, which creates a self-fulfilling prophecy that they
would die. In 2007-2008, 16.5 percent of the deaths in Britain
came about after continuous deep sedation, according to
researchers at the Barts and the London School of Medicine and
Dentistry, twice as many as in Belgium and the Netherlands.
Criticism of the LCP has long been simmering beneath the
surface in the UK. Back in December 1999, even before the LCP
program was formerly recommended by NICE, Dr. Adrian Treloar, now
a psycho-geriatrician and senior lecturer at the Greenwich
Hospital and the Guys, Kings, and St. Thomas's Hospitals in
London, denounced the British NHS for involuntary euthanasia. At
that time the British Medical Association (BMA) had issued
guidelines that said that doctors should be allowed to authorize
withdrawal of food and water by tube for victims of severe stroke
and dementia who can no longer express their wishes. The guidance
said: "Doctors should have the final say over whether treatment
including feeding and giving water is in the patient's best
interest. It is not always appropriate to prolong life."
More recently on April 26, 2008, Dr. Adrian Treloar, warned
in a letter to the British Medical Journal, that the Liverpool
Care Pathway is a blueprint for systematic euthanasia of disabled
patients. "Combined with withdrawal of fluids, deep sedation
leads quickly to death. Treloar wrote that the LCP threatens
patients because its eligibility criteria do not ensure that only
people who are about to die are allowed on the pathway. They
allow people who are thought to be dying, are bed-bound, and are
unable to take tablets, onto the pathway. In chronic disease such
as dementia, dying may take years, but such patients may be
eligible. GPs often put patients on to such a pathway without
palliative care advice."
Treloar expressed concern that sedation is being used as an
inexpensive alternative to assessment and specialist treatment.
The LCP recommends sedatives and opiates for all patients on an
`as required' basis, even when they are not agitated, in pain, or
distressed. An automatic pathway towards prescribing heavy
sedatives incurs risks. Moreover, the LCP recommends setting up a
syringe driver within four hours of a doctor's order. This is
laudable, if it is needed. But the pathway encourages the use of
syringe drivers even when symptoms can be managed without them.
The pathway doesn't mention the need for food and fluids.
In the letter, Treloar cites a Dutch study of the LCP:
"Reitjens et al. show that withholding artificial nutrition and
hydration is the norm. The LCPs omission of prompts to reconsider
nutrition and hydration may allow serious errors in the care of
dying patients. It is not acceptable, as Murray et al. suggest,
that assessing nutrition and hydration are not part of the
pathway. Sedation is right in some situations. But as Murray et
al. point out, the anticipated outcome of continuous deep
sedation is death. We must learn from Reitjens et al.'s
observation that continuous deep sedation may replace
euthanasia."
On Aug. 13, 2009, Adam Brimelow, BBC news health
correspondent, warned that there is evidence that some clinicians
may already be using continuous deep sedation (CDS), as a form of
slow euthanasia. Professor Clive Seale, at Barts and the London
School of Medicine and Dentistry, reports that in the UK the
prevalence of continuous deep sedation until death is very high
indeed, 16.5% of all UK deaths. (wfw)

Letter to the Editor of the Daily Telegraph Exposes NICE Murder
Policy
Sept. 3 (LPAC)--The following letter to the editor of the Daily
Telegraph is merely the latest, most explosive exposure of the
Nazi health policy implemented in Britain under Tony Blair and
his health adviser, Simon Stevens, who is now working with United
Health in collaboration with AARP. The report by the Patients'
Association referred to in the letter, exposed that one million
NHS patients received cruel or neglectful care. Another recent
report, by the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA), estimates
that the number of NHS patients who have been given the wrong
medicine has doubled in the last two years. A further report
indicates that a third of patients are being treated by nurses
rather than doctors at General Practioner surgeries.
This is the policy which Obama is desperately attempting to
impose on the population of the United States of America on
behalf of his British controllers.
The LaRouche PAC has been denounced and violently attacked
for denouncing Obama's policy as Nazi. Instead, opponents of this
Nazi policy at town meetings across the nation have been
denounced by the likes of Nancy Pelosi, among other allies of
Obama, as Nazis.
Here is the evidence of what is in store for Americans if
Obama were to succeed. You decide who is the Nazi.

"SIR The Patients Association has done well to expose the poor
treatment of elderly patients in some parts of the NHS (report,
August 27). We would like to draw attention to the new gold
standard treatment of those categorised as dying. Forecasting
death is an inexact science.
"Just as, in the financial world, so-called algorithmic
banking has caused problems by blindly following a computer
model, so a similar tick-box approach to the management of death
is causing a national crisis in care.
"The Government is rolling out a new treatment pattern of
palliative care into hospitals, nursing and residential homes. It
is based on experience in a Liverpool hospice. If you tick all
the right boxes in the Liverpool Care Pathway, the inevitable
outcome of the consequent treatment is death.
"As a result, a nationwide wave of discontent is building
up, as family and friends witness the denial of fluids and food
to patients. Syringe drivers are being used to give continuous
terminal sedation, without regard to the fact that the diagnosis
could be wrong.
"It is disturbing that in the year 2007-2008, 16.5 per cent
of deaths came about after terminal sedation. Experienced doctors
know that sometimes, when all but essential drugs are stopped,
dying patients get better."

P. H. Millard
Emeritus Professor of Geriatrics University of London
Dr Anthony Cole
Chairman, Medical Ethics Alliance
Dr Peter Hargreaves
Consultant in Palliative Medicine
Dr David Hill
Fellow of the Faculty of Anaesthetists of the Royal College of
Surgeons
Dr Elizabeth Negus
Lecturer, Barking University
Dowager Lady Salisbury
Chairman, Choose Life

This is clearly a hoax. Britain does not have a Barking University.

might be Luton

John, you should contact the BBC and inform them. They distributed the story .

Dr Peter Hargreaves, a consultant in palliative medicine, Dr David Hill, fellow of the Faculty of Anaesthetists of the Royal College of Surgeons, Dr Elizabeth Negus, a lecturer at Barking University, and Dowager Lady Salisbury, chairman of Choose Life, were the other signatories

http://www.rocketnews.com/2009/09/crisis-o...nally-ill-care/

Dr Elizabeth Negus ?

http://web-dev-csc.gre.ac.uk/conference/co...117&pId=726

I'm afraid she's right, John. The article, which is truncated in the version she uses, did appear on the BBC new website and refers to a letter printed in the Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/letters...g-patients.html. I don't see what it has to do with the lunatic views she put forward in the first post, however. It seems to refer to a debate within the medical profession with regard to the correct form of palliative care for terminal patients. Presumably, "Barking University" refers to the Barking campus of the University of East London.

You don't see what it has to do with the views I put forth? Perhaps you need to read the letter to the editor!

And if that doesnt clarify the issue for you then let me suggest that you watch this video.

http://www.larouchepac.com/lpactv?nid=11666

So far I have yet to see anyone claiming NHS policy has lead to the premature death of any specific patients. If it were true they should be able to cite numerous examples, e.g. "Ann Jones 79, of Liverpool died after she was denied care at Liverpool General Hospital"

I wonder also if the letter writers were correct why they had so little support from the geriatric medical community Dr. Cole is a pediatrician, Dr. Negus PHD is a Eng Lit teacher.

Like father like son.

I am amazed that you continue to post these ridiculous attacks on the NHS. Why are you in favour of the multinational drug and insurance corporations? Are they the new funders of the LaRouche organisation?

The NHS is far from being perfect. It is under-funded and I would like to see more money spent on health-care and less on nuclear weapons and the invasion and occupation of foreign countries. However, as a means of protecting people, regardless of income, it takes some beating. Anyway, it appears to be far superior to the one that exists in the United States. For example, the World Health Organisation ranks Britain's healthcare as 18th in the world, while the US is in 37th place.

You should stick to parroting your “master” when you chirp in your own thoughts you come across as bird brained. Your dumb adhom was obviously the response of someone otherwise unable to reply. You should also stick to the Deep Phertalizer Forum it’s more at your level.

"Unable to respond"? I'd say I hit the mark.

Hysterical New York Times Defends Obama's Euthanasia

September 7, 2009 (LPAC)--The New York Times dragged out
columnist Ross Douthat again yesterday for a defense of Obama's
Hitlerian health-care agenda. The latest Douthat column promotes
Obama's euthanasia counselor Ezekiel Emanuel as an opponent of
assisted suicide. Not bothered by logic, Douthat then proceeds to
attack the U.S. population for its blind allegiance to fighting
death.
Douthat acknowledges "the recent controversy over Great
Britain's Liverpool Care Pathway, whose ... approach to dying
patients may involve withdrawing care before their death is
actually certain." He says it might be connected to "a
particularly sinister form of rationing."
This is the program which murders 1 in 6 of the Britons who
die, imposed by the National Health Service's NICE agency Obama
touts as his model for the U.S.A.
But Douthat suggests that assisted suicide would likely be
{preferred} by Americans to this efficient British non-voluntary
approach -- because our population stubbornly seeks to control
death, spending extravagant amounts to save lives, and suicide is
one means of control!
Douthat writes that Americans' "goal is perfect autonomy,
perfect control, and absolute freedom of choice. And in each
case, the alternative approach, one that emphasizes the limits of
human agency, and the importance of humility in the face of
death's mysteries doesn't mesh with our national DNA."
And "in the profligate, Promethean United States, it
probably won't lead to rationing-by-euthanasia. ...[Assisted
suicide is] just as likely to become one more intervention that
we insist every health insurance plan should cover on our way,
perhaps, to a rendezvous with fiscal suicide."
Douthat (pronounced "yes mein Fuehrer, do-that") has
previously written with alarm about the LaRouche presence
everywhere in this debate, and proclaimed his disgust at the
spectacle of elderly people, a "sea of septuagenarians: some in
wheelchairs, some clutching walkers, some dragging dialysis
machines," clinging to life despite the cost, and sticking their
noses in the national debate.

Not being able to refute my points you resorted to an irrelevant ad hom, as I said stick to what you do best, mindlessly repeating the pronouncements of your guru.

You should realize that no one here but you accepts the 'LaRouche says so, therefore it's so' standard of proof. He says "the program which murders 1 in 6 of the Britons who die, imposed by the National Health Service's NICE agency" but offers no evidence in support of this claim.

Wrong as usual. I pointed out that you were exactly like your father. This was the guy who could not find a shred of "evidence" linking his employers products to an increase in the death rates of their customers.

Now like your father (who was likely a more sophisticated and practiced sophist) you pee around the bush asking for names and address of those patients killed as a result of the rationing policy imposed by NICE.

You're like a little kid "no one here likes LaRouche". The last time you pulled that stunt , Douglas Caddy threw it right back in your face, showing how ignorant you are of the truth.

I see you have turned this debate into a silly attack on Len Colby's father. Why don't you address this question?

I'm sorry John I did not see your question. You asked: Why are you in favour of the multinational drug and insurance corporations? Are they the new funders of the LaRouche organisation?

No.

LaRouche is in favor of a bankruptcy reorganization of the current financial and monetary system; replacing it with an American System -Credit System- .
He is in favor of a return to the FDR "Hill-Burton" approach for health care.

If you're interested in finding out what is really happening then I suggest you watch Lyndon LaRouche's speech (Death of the British Empire) presented yesterday in Washington DC.

http://www.larouchepac.com/webcasts/20090908.html

Good Lord - the evils of the entire world are down to a 'British conspiracy' - how delightfully daft!

Andy, are you quoting from the late Lord Palmerston?

Thank you Terry you have made me laugh so much tears are running down my cheeks as I type this. I have encountered some extreme dottiness in my time but never have I encountered such howling insanity as is peddled by this LaRouche movement you have chosen to represent on the Education Forum. For the uninitiated, as I was until a few moments ago, I advise you to take a chair for this is an ideology which places a fair few demands on one when first encountered.

Terry please correct me if I am wrong but you appear to believe;

1. The world is run by a financial elite headed by none other than Queen Elizabeth II
2. QEII (god bless her) is also an international narcotics runner and drugs baron (ness)
3. Our beloved monarch is also fairly adept at assassination - having had Princess Di done in - she now also plans to assassinate Lyndon Larouche.

Busy for an octogenarian constitutional monarch is she not? - I suppose the Duke of Edinburgh helps out a bit on busy days?

Thanks again Terry this is the most I have laughed since Maggie Thatcher left Downing Street in tears.... I think I am going to do myself an injury

Correct you if you're wrong? Okay, you're wrong. But I have read these idiotic slanders many times myself. It takes little brains to repeat this worn out gossip.

The last time I read this kind of tripe it came from the poison pen of Ambrose Evans- Pritchard who was in the employ of John Simkins former employer Lord Conrad Black and his "Hollinger Corporation".
QUOTE:

In the June 4 , 1998 edition of the Hollinger Corp.'s Daily Telegraph, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, the infamous "Clinton-basher," penned a shameless slander against EIR and Lyndon LaRouche, absurdly blaming us for the "conspiracy industry" that has built up since the Aug. 31, 1997 death of Princess Diana, her companion Dodi Fayed, and driver Henri Paul. In typical Evans-Pritchard style, the British poison pen, who admits to close collaboration with Britain's MI6 intelligence service in all of his overseas assignments, lied that EIR is "accusing the Queen of ordering the assassination of Diana, Princess of Wales." He continued, "The group is led by Lyndon H. LaRouche, 76, a cranky economist, convicted felon and publisher of a book that accuses the Queen of being the world's foremost drug dealer." The latter bit of black propaganda is a reference to the book Dope, Inc., first published in 1979, which laid bare the role of the London-centered offshore financial institutions and allied intelligence services, in running the global drug trade, from the time of Britain's nineteenth-century Opium Wars against China.

http://larouchepub.com/other/1998/2525_diana_wars.html

If you want to know LaRouche's view on the international drug trade then you should wipe the tears from your eyes and read his book Dope Inc. A thorough reading should clear up any misconceptions you might have. Be warned, it will take longer than the "few minutes" it took you to find and repeat these worn out LaRouche slanders.

http://www.conspiracyresearch.org/forums/i...post&id=266

You are really priceless and so are your links
I see John Simkin is implicated in all this by dint of his employment history.... here's a good one too I am from the Isle of Man - a shady offshore tax haven - maybe I am in on it all too????? I once met the queen after all.
Incidentally which bit of that sentence was slander (I think you mean libel) 'cranky, convicted felon, or book publisher?

Getting back to the NHS - why are you against the idea of free access to basic health care at point of need? It has proved rather a good idea over here.

Andy I was refering to these slanders. You wrote it and now you cannot remember?

1. The world is run by a financial elite headed by none other than Queen Elizabeth II
2. QEII (god bless her) is also an international narcotics runner and drugs baron (ness)
3. Our beloved monarch is also fairly adept at assassination - having had Princess Di done in - she now also plans to assassinate Lyndon Larouche.

I did not implicate John Simkins. I simply pointed out that he worked for Hollinger Corporation, the same British media organization pumping out this fiction about Lyndon LaRouche.

And if you don't know my position on healthcare then you havent been reading this thread, old girl.

If my comments are as you describe they are libels not slanders. However I see nothing in your links or in the wacky world you seem to inhabit to suggest my comments are not held by the likes of larouche and webster tarply and other assorted nutcases there gathered. Your cult clearly holds the view that the world is run by murderous criminal financiers headed by the British establishment or is that libel too? - Let’s call it 'slibel' shall we as you clearly do not understand the difference.

Your views on health care?? You think it is 'Nazi' for the state to provide it - surprised you forgot that given its complexity



'old girl??????????'

"Your cult clearly holds the "few"? I don't know what you're rambling about old girl?

Anyone wanting to know LaRouche's view should have little trouble accessing his speeches, writings, etc. Lord I provided you an on line version of Dope Inc.

And no I don't think it is Nazi policy if the state provides healthcare and I never stated as much. What I stated was Barrack Obama's proposed healthcare legislation was a replay of the Nazi healthcare policy of Adolph Hitler. Now that's the real issue/question old Girl. Not some rehashed meaningless statement of the type you make. You mistate the facts and then attempt to argue based on your mistaken conception of the issue at hand.

When President Barack Obama delivered his nationally televised press conference on July 22, in which he pressed for legislation that called for an "independent board of doctors and health-care experts" to be established as a means of cutting health-care costs, he crossed the line. Lyndon LaRouche, America's leading economist and statesman, who has been warning of the dangers of the President's Nero complex with ever-greater urgency since his April 11 webcast, responded immediately, with the following statement:

President Obama is now impeachable, because he has, in effect, proposed legislation which is an exact copy of the legislation for which the Hitler regime was condemned in the post-World War II trials. It is an impeachable offense to propose such a thing in this time. With this statement from him, the President now deserves impeachment.

http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2009.../04-07_3629.pdf

Not very good at history are you?
Nor is your understanding of National Socialism particularly strong.
Your insistence also on referring to me as 'old girl' nicely confirms my view that you are more than a little touched.
Your description of your cult's leader is hilarious.
I speak simply.
In short phrases.
In the hope
You may.......


understand

Your response is just insult and unproven assertions.

How is that brilliant?

Difficult to take you seriously I am afraid. I'll try again though if you will explain to me the ideological similarities between the policies of Adolf Hitler and those of your rather impressive young President. By this I mean explain what you actually understand by this rather than just copying and pasting the rambling words or links of your rather unusual guru.
(Drawing a Hitler moustache on a picture of Obama will not count as an 'argument' in this exercise}.