My most recent podcast is an interview with Cindy Friedman, the Senate’s health care finance chair. Senator Friedman offers a thoughtful and passionate overview of the challenges we face in health care today.
Comments appreciated! If you want a transcript or chapter breakdown of the podcast, you can get it Buzzsprout.
See this also this buzzsprout link for prior podcasts.
What is the state of the independant audit of state spending that 72% of MA voters want? in a fractured political envirnoment, 72% is a landslide.
By my reading WB already stated in an earlier post that the Massachusetts Legislature has complied as much as required. In this nanny state we just smile patiently and pat the voters on the head.
Democracy is an obstacle to SocProgs.
Local choice is one of the purest expressions of democracy and I’d love to have been a fly on the wall for the discussion I imagine took place to organize keeping the anti-Democratic MBTA Communities Act off of the local ballots.
The Constitutionality of The Act is an inverse reading of the law. Bit what do you expect with an incestuous and inbred SJC?
I just complained to someone that American healthcare is so messed up , let’s do what France does.
When I started my business in Massachusetts, as a sole proprietor, in 2001, my healthcare premium (to buy a private plan, which allowed me access to any MD or hospital in Boston) was $213 a month, and my copay was $5, to see any doctor, or get any prescription. I had a zero deductible.
Then the federal government passed Obamacare.
Now, as a sole proprietor, the best plan I can buy in the state of Massachusetts offers me a monthly healthcare premium of nearly $1,000 a month, and I have no copay. Instead of a copay, I must fulfill a $10,000 deductible, before the health insurance plan will pay anything at all for any aspect of my care (except an annual well visit.)
This plan also does not allow me to access Mass General or the Brigham. I can have access to what are considered lower tier care providers, such as BI Deaconess.
I do not qualify for Obamacare plans or subsidies because my income is not low enough to qualify.
My income is also not high enough to afford these premiums.
What is being done to the middle class in this country is what is prompting people, especially the young people in Boston at some of the most prestigious universities (i.e. MIT, Harvard) to call for socialism (i.e. Communism.) which is the process that ironically led to this precipitous rise in healthcare premiums.
When I studied history at Boston College, I learned that the Nazi party in Germany was Socialist. And that Socialism and Fascism were the destructive forces at work in the German economy at the time.
It is the over involvement of government in healthcare, and the ongoing favoritism the government shows towards the corporates at the cost of the individual in our present situation that is causing the exorbitant rise in costs.
Massachusetts had a decent system in place to provide healthcare for all, just a couple decades ago. Premiums for working people were manageable, and poor people were taken care of.
The Federal overtaking of healthcare via Obamacare has been a complete disaster, and it cannot be fixed by the federal government that created it.
The democratic party’s embrace of illegal immigration, and their stated goal for everyone to have access to affordable healthcare (better yet, free for illegal immigrants) are mutually exclusive. One of several reasons why taking democrats seriously these days is very hard.
Don’t like the exorbitant cost of healthcare today? Then abolish the private health insurance industry, which takes billions from policyholders every year. Generating huge profits for itself. And treating the policyholders solely as means to that end. The American people spend more on health care than the people of any other country, and our health is abysmally poor. Do you remember a dreadful incident not so very long ago, when a health insurance executive was deliberately shot on the street in New York? Ask yourself why the shooter was immediately and openly hailed as a hero by untold numbers of Americans. And why panic spread like influenza in dozens of corporate boardrooms. Those gentry had suddenly realized that they were held in the utmost contempt, to put it mildly, by the general public. There was just one reason for that: the whole country (minus the ultra-wealthy) was fed up beyond endurance with how the health insurance companies were dealing with them. The USA has been on the shaky edge of what think-tanks euphemistically term “widespread civil unrest” for a number of years now. Under the present administration (in Washington) the national mood certainly has not improved. Quite the contrary. I do hope that people in positions of influence and power will read the tea leaves correctly, and take sensible steps to correct an untenable, unsustainable, and possibly …in the middle-to-long-term… unsurvivable state of affairs. Widespread civil unrest is something that no sane adult wants to see. It can be avoided, of course, simply by ensuring that all people are treated decently. Forcing great numbers of them into bankruptcy because of healthcare bills does not constitute decent treatment. Please note: in Washington the Republicans control the House, the Senate, the presidency, and have a comfortable conservative majority on the Supreme Court. They can pass the needed legislation, Mr. Trump can sign it into law, and the justices can reject any challenges as to its constitutionality. Waiting on you, Republicans. Healthcare for all, free at the point of service, funded in advance and in perpetuity by all the taxpayers. Sounds too “radical” and “communist” for y’all? OK, then we’ll compromise: just guarantee to us taxpayers exactly the same healthcare, at the same out-of-pocket cost, that you elected representatives receive. Surely that’s as American as apple pie? Surely the Republican pols in DC are not radical commies? Fine, then kindly give to us what we’ve been generous enough to give to you.
Addendum: As I understand it, the legislators get around three-quarters of their annual premium paid by the government. They still have to cough up the remaining 25%, plus the usual copays and so forth to whichever company they’re enrolled with. That’s still a lousy system but better than what a lot of ordinary citizens have to go through. Single payer for everyone is the way to go, of course. It would certainly save the government heaps of money compared to the present hodge-podge crazyquilt of assorted corporate payees. Doctors should spend their workday practicing medicine with their patients, not waste hours exchanging faxes and emails with dozens of private insurers. Which is what they do right now.
You and Senator Friedman do an efficient job of noting what is wrong with our privatized/corporatized healthcare system, the successes and challenges of MassHealth, and the political pressures that keep us stuck. Yet Friedman makes only passing reference to the fact that we are ignoring what works better for the rest of the developed world: single payer healthcare. She says we have an opportunity in this moment, but when are our leaders going to actually stand up and fight for this obvious choice?