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The OBAMA Healthcare Plan

“At this moment, we are being called upon to fulfill our duty to the citizens of this nation
and to future generations... I don’t know how passing health care will play politically, but
I do know that it’s the right thing to do. It’s right for our families. It’s right for our
businesses. It’s right for the United States of America.”
PRESIDENT OBAMA

Americans across this country agree that our health care system is broken:

Unaccountable insurance companies ration care, soaring premiums cripple the budgets of our businesses and families, and vital care remains out of reach for far too many.

The time for change has come.
President Obama’s final proposal incorporates the best ideas from both parties to put
Americans in control of our own health care.

HERE’ S WHAT THE PRESIDENT’S PLAN FOR HEALTH REFORM WILL DO:

PROTECT AMERICANS FROM INSURANCE COMPANY ABUSES
• You will never be denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions
• You will never be hit with arbitrary premium hikes
• You will never see your coverage revoked just when you get sick or injured
• You will never face unlimited out-of-pocket expenses for your care
GUARANTEE AFFORDABLE CHOICES
• If you like your current doctor and you like your current plan, you keep them
• Uninsured individuals and small business owners will become part of a powerful negotiating
pool, just like members of Congress and other federal employees, lowering prices and
increasing choice
• Struggling middle-class families will receive a tax credit to make coverage even more
affordable – the largest middle class tax cut for health care in history
REDUCE THE COST OF CARE FOR OUR FAMILIES, BUSINESSES
AND THE GOVERNMENT
• We’ll save billions of dollars every year by reducing waste and abuse in our current system
• We’ll save and create millions of jobs, raise wages and strengthen the economy
• We’ll cut the deficit by nearly $1 trillion over two decades

WHAT WILL HEALTH REFORM MEAN FOR YOU?

“I HAVE INSURANCE THROUGH MY WORK.”
Keep your doctor and plan if you like it, but your plan will be strengthened and you'll be protected from insurance company abuses.
• According to the independent
and non-partisan
Congressional Budget Office,
people who get coverage
through their employer today
will likely see lower premiums.
• If you like the health plan you
have, you will be able to keep
it.
• The President’s proposal will
strengthen the coverage you
get at work by reining in the
worst insurance company
abuses.
• Nothing about the President’s
proposal will interfere with
the choice of doctors you
have today, or cause you to
change the coverage you
have at work today.

“I OWN A SMALL BUSINESS.”
You won't be required to
provide health insurance to
your employees, but if you
choose to, new tax credits
will make covering your
employees more affordable.
You will also have access to a
new insurance exchange to
find the best deal, and the
entire process will be simpler.
• The President’s proposal
provides tens of billions of
dollars in new tax credits to
small businesses to make it
easier for them to provide
coverage if they choose to do
so.
• You will be protected from
sudden, arbitrary rate hikes
because a worker gets sick;
under the President’s
proposal, insurance
companies will no longer be
permitted to base the cost of
coverage on health status.
• The President’s proposal
gives small business owners
the leverage that big
businesses enjoy by allowing
them to buy coverage
through the exchange.

“I HAVE MEDICARE.”
Health reform protects
Medicare. The President’s
proposal makes Medicare
more financially secure and
seniors who hit the
prescription drug "donut
hole" will be protected from
high costs for their medicines.
• Your guaranteed Medicare
benefits will not be cut, and the
Medicare Trust Fund will be
extended for more than 9 years.
• In addition, you will have
benefits you don’t have
today: Preventive services like
cancer screenings at no cost,
and a substantial reduction in
prescription drug prices if
you fall into that gap in
coverage known as the
“donut hole.” Over time the
proposal closes this coverage
gap completely.
• Health insurance reform will
not affect the choice of
doctors you have today and it
won’t affect your relationship
with your doctor. The
President’s plan aims to
increase the number of
primary care providers, giving
you greater access to doctors
than you have today.

“I DO NOT HAVE
INSURANCE.”
You will have access to new
insurance choices in the
same insurance marketplace
where all members of
Congress will buy their
insurance, receive tax credits
to help you afford coverage
if needed, and enjoy
protections from insurance
company abuses.
• For the first time in history,
there will be limits on how
much anyone will have to pay
to receive health care
coverage.
• If you need it, you will receive
a tax credit to help pay for
your coverage – part of the
largest middle class tax cut
for health care in history.
• Insurance companies will no
longer be allowed to simply
tell you “no.” They will be
required to offer coverage
regardless of your health
status or because of
pre-existing conditions, and
they cannot jack up rates or
drop you from your coverage
when you get sick.

“I BUY MY OWN
INSURANCE.”
There will be new protections
from insurance company
abuses, and tax credits will
make coverage more
affordable. You will have
access to new insurance
choices in the same insurance
marketplace where all
members of Congress will buy
their insurance.
• You will likely pay
less—perhaps much
less—than you do currently.
• In addition, many Americans
buying coverage in the
individual market will qualify
for tax credits that reduce
their premiums by an average
of nearly 60 percent – and
they will get better coverage
than what they have today.
• Health insurance reform will
limit what you have to pay
out of pocket, a protection
that does not exist today.
And for the first time, no one
will be required to pay more
than a set percentage of their
income on health care
coverage.

“So how much higher do premiums have to rise until we do something about it? How
many more Americans have to lose their health insurance? How many more businesses
have to drop coverage? How many more years can the federal budget handle the crushing
costs of Medicare and Medicaid? When is the right time for health insurance reform?”
PRESIDENT OBAMA

THE COST OF INACTION
IF WE DO NOT PASS HEALTH INSURANCE REFORM:
Up to 17 million more people will be uninsured by 2019 than today.

The average family's health care costs will nearly double by 2020, from $13,000 to $24,000
— meaning they'll be paying a quarter of their income toward health care costs.

Insurers can continue the massive and arbitrary premium rate increases we've heard about
recently — such as Anthem Blue Cross raising rates for customers in California by nearly
40%, and rates in Illinois going up by as much as 60%.
As many as 275,000 people could die prematurely over the next 10 years because they
don't have health insurance.

Health care costs will take up a staggering amount of our national budget. In 1960, it was 5
percent of gross domestic product (GDP), last year it was 17 percent. Costs will reach 21
percent of our economy by 2020 if we fail to act.

Rapidly rising costs will make it harder for employers — particularly small businesses — to
provide quality health insurance to employees, leading many to drop coverage or shift to
plans that cover less.

Even those who have insurance today will be less secure, and more likely to lose coverage if
they switch jobs or lose their job due to rising costs on the individual market or being
denied coverage due to a pre-existing condition.

1. http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/411965_failure_to_enact.pdf

2. Commonwealth Fund, via NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/weekinreview/28abelson.html

3. Families USA, via NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/weekinreview/28abelson.html

4. http://www.commonwealthfund.org/Content/Blog/The-Costs-of-Failure.aspx

5. http://www.commonwealthfund.org/Content/Blog/The-Costs-of-Failure.aspx

6. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/opinion/07sun1.html?pagewanted=all

It's time to show the insurance lobbyists that no smear campaign can match
the power of millions of regular citizens who are ready for change and
committed to the truth.

Congress must understand that if they pass reform, their constituents will
know the truth about what we've finally achieved.

UNDER THE PRESIDENT'S PLAN FOR REFORM:

• If you have health insurance through your employer and you like your plan, you can keep it
• If you're a small business owner, you'll receive new tax credits that make it easier for you to
provide coverage for employees if you choose to do so
• If you have Medicare, the President's plan guarantees that your benefits will not be cut, and
the Medicare Trust Fund will be extended for more than 9 years
• If you're uninsured, you could receive a tax credit to help pay for coverage if needed — part
of the largest middle class tax cut for health care in history
• Even if you currently have health insurance, there will be new protections from insurance
company abuses, and tax credits will make coverage more affordable

THE PRESIDENT'S PLAN GUARANTEES THAT:
• You will never be denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions
• You will never again be hit with arbitrary health insurance premium hikes

IF WE DO NOT PASS REFORM:
• Up to 17 million more people will be uninsured by 2019
• Insurers can continue their massive and arbitrary premium rate increases — such as Anthem
Blue Cross raising rates for customers in California by nearly 40%, and rates in Illinois going
up by as much as 60%
• As many as 275,000 people could die prematurely over the next 10 years because they don't
have health insurance
• The average family's health care costs will nearly double by 2020, from $13,000 to $24,000

Palin Crossed Border For Canadian Health Care

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/08/palin-crossed-border-for_n_490080.html

Palin Crossed Border For Canadian Health Care

First Posted: 03- 8-10 11:59 AM | Updated: 03- 8-10 12:26 PM

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin -- who has gone to great lengths to hype the supposed dangers of a big government takeover of American health care -- admitted over the weekend that she used to get her treatment in Canada's single-payer system.
"We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada,"

Palin said in her first Canadian appearance since stepping down as governor of Alaska. "And I think now, isn't that ironic?"

The irony, one guesses, is that Palin now views Canada's health care system as revolting: with its government-run administration and 'death-panel'-like rationing. Clearly, however, she and her family once found it more alluring than, at the very least, the coverage available in rural Alaska. Up to the age of six, Palin lived in a remote town near the closest Canadian city, Whitehorse.

Officials at several hospitals in that area declined to give out information on patient visits.

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An American cry for help

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

An American cry for help
Olbermann:
All Americans should be able to make medical decisions free of worry about cost

SPECIAL COMMENT
By Keith Olbermann
Anchor, 'Countdown' msnbc.com
February 22, 2010

Finally tonight, a Special Comment about health care reform and tomorrow's summit at Blair House. If I prove to have trouble getting through this, I apologize in advance. Last Friday Night my father asked me to kill him. We were just shy of six months since he was hospitalized and it was the end of a long day at the end of a longer week.

Not to get too clinical or too grotesque on you, but he'd had his colon removed at the end of September and that went so well that it was no more complicated than an appendectomy. But what followed was a series of infections, like storms in the monsoon season, one arriving, blossoming, inundating him, my Dad shaking it off and cheerfully bouncing back, and then within days another one coming in to flatten him once again.

Pneumonia, three or four times — I've lost count. Kidney failure, liver failure — the liver failure got better, remarkably enough. Dialysis, feeding tubes, drainage taps, drainage tubes, breathing tubes. Couldn't talk through that. Then he got strong enough and they could put a cap on the breathing tube and one day he scared the crap out of a friend of his who didn't know, who came in and gave him the customary "how you doin' Ted?" only to jump out of his shoes when my father suddenly and gleefully answered him in a strong full voice, "surprisingly well."

Sometimes he swelled up and looked like as puffy as prizefighter who'd had a bad night.

Sometimes he'd get dialysis so effective or an antibiotic so specific that he would look like he did twenty-five years ago.

Three weeks ago they had found something extraordinary. A nurse noticed what seemed like a minor infection just below the surface of the skin, a kind of super-pimple if you will. It was actually the edge of a series of abscesses which would be drained and would produce, all told, about six liters of infected stuff. Six liters. You know how much that is? You know what that looks like? You don't want to know.

But you do want to know it's been found because it means he hasn't been weak all this time, he's been incredibly, inhumanly strong. The abscesses were swimming pools for these infections. The strongest one would emerge, then my Dad with the help of the antibiotics would kill it off, then the antibiotics would be discontinued, and the next infection would pop out and challenge him.

As he pointed out you know: just like the organized crime families. Then last week they found another abscess of sorts, in the chest. So they needed to put in drains there, too. This was Friday morning. His surgical team came to see him, he did his non-verbal caricature of their chief, they laughed like hell, they numbed him up, snip snip, plug plug, and this infection starts draining, and they leave him alone for awhile.

And then in the afternoon they changed a few of the plugs the IV's attach to. And the respiratory therapist had been in, checking the ventilator and his tubes because there was a leak somewhere. And to improve dialysis, they changed his dialysis port. And then in the evening they needed a CAT-scan of his chest to make sure the drains were in the right place. And they had to change a dressing on some bad skin. And every hour they had to draw blood to check how well he was getting oxygen. And then at night it was time for dialysis using the new port.

And that's when I showed up. My father was a little annoyed, the way he often gets in there annoyed about all the activity. That day, it was like being Sisyphus with the boulder, only at the top of the hill, when he loses the boulder, it doesn't just roll back down hill, it rolls over him, first.

He's brave about pain, provided you warn him in advance, and provided the sheer volume of activity doesn't terrify him. As in terrorism, it isn't just terror when it happens, it's terror that it might happen. So he's annoyed, but in a good mood, and, as I usually do, I sit down to read to him. Thurber. I've been reading him a lot of James Thurber short stories lately and he's insisted that I should do it on the show, and we'll see about that. But a few pages in, the x-ray technician shows up

They have to take one more picture of him, to see if those new drains in his chest are working. And I have to leave his room for, at most, three minutes. I come back in and my father is thrashing his head back and forth. You can't hear him, he can't speak at the moment, but you become a lip-reader in those circumstances and this one word he keeps repeating is not tough to discern.

"Help." He is mouthing the word "help," over and over and over again. And I get his attention. He is in full panic. Maybe the x-ray tech hurt my Dad's back, or touched those new chest drains — more likely he did nothing very much at all. But it was just too much for my father.

"Stop this," he mouths. "Stop, stop, stop." And I say to him: I know for a fact they are not doing anything more to you tonight. And he looks at me and starts thrashing his head again: "Help, help, help."

I get his attention again. I ask him: do you want me to stop all of this? And he looks at me and mouths "yes." And I ask him: you understand what happens then. And he looks at me and mouths "yes." And I ask him: you realize you are not terminally ill, and if we do stop all of this, it might not be quick. And he mouths "stop this." And I say, trying to joke him out of it — and trust me, gallows humor is your best defense in this situation — "what? You want me to smother you with a pillow?" And he mouths "yes — kill me."

I told him that obviously I wouldn't do that, but I would go and talk to the doctors. When I came back, I told him they'd be really put out by this, because he wasn't sick enough and all the indications were he could still fight off what remained of the infections. And he went back to thrashing his head and mouthing "help" because clearly I was not giving him the sense of relief — relief from the paradoxical truth that people desperately trying to save your life, sometimes manage only to torture you. Of course, I actually was getting him that sense of relief.

When I went to see the Surgical Intensive Care Unit resident I told him my Dad had hit his wall. That he couldn't take any other work, that it was now terrifying torture, that he needed it to stop. But I said, look, I'm his health proxy, we've had conversations about end-of-life care — we've had them in here, we've had them when he was home and well, I'm not operating in the dark here. I said I think he really wants the one word he keeps mouthing: He wants help. Is there any medical reason not to give him some sedation, a little mental vacation from being a patient?

The resident thought that was a damn good idea and that it would help his breathing, which the respiratory therapist had noticed wasn't quite right. So when I came in and gave my father the song and dance about how "put out" the doctors were, really, I was just stalling. I started to read to him again, and he was still thrashing his head from side to side in frustration, and then he started to calm down and enjoy the story and as he began to rest, the nurse slipped in and injected a sedative into one of his IV's.

And as I left that night the full impact of these last six months washed over me. What I had done, conferring with the resident in ICU, the conversation about my father's panicky, not-in-complete-control-of-his-faculties demand that all treatment stop, about the options and the consequences and the compromise — the sedation — the help for a brave man who just needed a break… that conversation, that one — was what these ghouls who are walking into Blair House tomorrow morning decided to call "death panels."

Your right to have that conversation with a doctor, not the government, but a doctor and your right to have insurance pay for his expertise on what your options are when Dad says "kill me" or what your options are when Dad is in a coma and can't tell you a damn thing, or what your options are when everybody is healthy and happy and coherent and you're just planning ahead your right to have the guidance and the reassurance of a professional who can lay that out for you that's a quote "death panel."

That, right now, is the legacy of the protests of these sub-humans who get paid by the insurance companies, who say these things for their own political gain or like that one fiend or money. For money Betsy McCaughey told people that this conversation about life and death and relief and release, and also about no, keep treating him no matter what happens, until the nation runs out of medicine, she told people it's a death panel and she did that for money.

It's a life panel. A life panel, it can save the pain of the patient and the family it is the difference between you guessing what happens next, and you being informed about what probably will, and that's the difference between you sleeping at night or second-guessing and third-guessing and thirtieth-guessing. And it can also be the place where the family says 'we want you to keep him alive no matter what, we believe in miracles' and the doctor saying yes.

Nobody gets to say no except the patient and the family. It's a life panel. And damn those who call it otherwise to hell. And that brings up the other point of all this. They've rolled my father under every piece of machinery in there except an atom-splitter. They've pumped him full of every drug and remedy. And he's got Medicare and a supplemental insurance and my out-of-pocket medical bills over the last six months have been greater than my Dad's have.

And why in the hell should that not be true of everybody, in every hospital, in every sick room, in every clinic, in this country? What is this country for if not to take care of its people? Because whatever I've been through these last six months and whatever my Dad's been through, not once were our fears or our decisions amplified by the further horror of wondering how in the hell we would pay for this. What about families having these conversations tonight about kids? Or about uninsured adults?

Or what about the guy out there whose father is 50 and he's mouthing the word "help" and the guy knows what his father doesn't know that the insurance company has just declared the illness the father has is a "pre-existing condition" and he has no insurance, and when that son goes out to talk to that doctor about what to do next, even if there's a chance of recovery, that son can't afford to pay for it! That is the goddamned death panel, Sarah Palin.

Since Friday night, my father has been comfortable. He has been breathing well, and there has been no sign of stress or discomfort. He has also not awakened. His white blood cell count, the indicator of infection, is now at about four or five times normal. Doubtlessly, in removing that much infection from him, some of it got loose and into his bloodstream.

He's not being sedated any more; he only has the strength to fight off the infections, or wake up — not both. We're hoping he does the first, then the latter. We're prepared for the probability that he will do neither. His team and I had another "life panel" discussion not six hours ago. And thank God I had those conversation with my father.

Thank God I got his instructions about when to use my judgment and when to stick with his; when if he's capable of recovery to let them use everything they have and when to make sure they're not just keeping him alive with no hope; when to listen to the instruction "help" — first, and then the one about "stop" — later.

So, considering that if he does not recover, you will not see me here for awhile, I have some requests. First of you: Please have this conversation with your loved ones. Don't wait. Do it now. It's tough. It acknowledges death. And it also narrows the gray area you or they will face, from infinity to about a foot wide. It is my greatest comfort right now and I want it to be yours.

And to the politicians who go into Blair House tomorrow for the summit: I have some requests as well. Leave your egos at the door. I want, I demand, that you give everybody in this country a chance at the care my father has gotten. And I demand, that you enact this most generous and most kind aspect of the reform proposed: the right to bill the damned insurance company for the conversation about what to do when the time comes, the Life Panel.

And I want all of you to think of somebody lying in a hospital bed tonight who needed that care and needed that conversation, and imagine that that is your father, or mother, or son, or daughter, or wife, or husband, or partner. If you cannot do that, if you cannot put aside the meaninglessness of your political careers for this, my request to you then, is that you not come back out of that meeting for you would not be worthy of being with the real people of this country who suffer, and suffer again because you have acted on behalf of the corporations and not the people.

If you cannot do this, go into that room and stay there and we'll get new ones to replace your worthless roles in the life of our country. My father cannot speak for himself. He appointed me to do so for him and I haven't the slightest doubt he wants me to say this tonight, right now.

He mouthed the words to me and I will now give them such voice as I have to you going into that summit tomorrow.

Help. Help. Help. Help.

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