Just to briefly f/u on the SF 2324 single-payer bill debate just for
clarity and then to get on with building this movement.
Kip's contention is that John Marty's SF 2324 [permits the state to
contract with "health plans" aka HMOs]. I read through the entire 23
page
bill, not the summary, which can be obscured, very thoroughly ( i
regularly spend a ton of time studying the MN Health Care statutes, see
Chapter 62 and rules) and cannot find any language about the state
contracting with "health plans".  The term "health plan" shows up once
but says nothing about any such contracting. The only term which may
remotely resemble a "health plan" e.g. an HMO is the term "integrated
health care systems" (Integrated Service Networks was the former term
used to describe HMOs in the 1993 legislation), but these "integrated
health care systems" are defined in terms of delivering care, not
selling private insurance, or prices, or markets.

In the financing section, which is key, the bill does use the  word
premiums, but when you really read it, it's just an attempt to avoid
using the word taxes. The premiums would be "progressive" and based on
"ability to pay" as they should be. That amounts to a progressive tax.
But i agree that the bill should be very ginger about avoiding the word
'tax'. To be sure, the MN Dept of Revenue in conjunction with the "MN
Health Care Plan", a new state agency (the single-payer), would make
recommendations for collecting the revenues earmarked for the state
treasury. In addition to these premiums (taxes) on individuals and
employers, all currently existing federal and state health care program
funds would be consolidated and earmarked to the same state treasury.
The single-payer then develops budgets (see p8 e.g.), based on
population needs, allocated to institutions which actually deliver
health care.  Therefore, this bill has all the elements of a
single-payer bill,   other key language of which i excerpted in my last
post and are self-explanatory.

joel



Joel Albers
Universal Health Care Action Network Minnesota
612-384-0973
joel@...
www.uhcan-mn.org
Health Care Economics Researcher, Clinical Pharmacist

Hey, ALL!!!

I am sad to say, I forgot to include sisters JOAN
MALERICH and ELIZABETH DICKINSON as universal health
single payer healthcare researchers in that last email
I sent.  I'm sorry. I'm a bad feminist, bad activist.
I too, need to remember to include/acknowledge all our
researchers. Each of you individually have so much
knowledge and information and you share it several
times a week on the list-serve, and we all thank
everyone who takes the time to do this.....AND engage
in discourse, too.  Collectively, we're a powerhouse.
We all just need to work together on this  vision and
keep it coherent and strong and intact--not pissed
away to the corporate elite.

If my remarks have offended anybody so far, I don't
aplogize for anything I've said, and I do invite
everyone to work together on only universal single
payer for health care, as well as other critical
causes.  But universal single payer is the only health
care cause and vision we can work towards; anything
else is death.  We cannot compromise and band-aid
ourselves into chronic disease.  We need to work at
the national level to get this passed, and in the
meantime, assure that any healthcare machinations in
this state do not incrementalize or bastardize  a
universal single payer health care model.  HMOs and
insurance companies need their asses kicked to the
curb.

Elitists and whiney self-protective progressives,
MUHCC members, PNHP members, elected officials, hell,
even republicans are welcome to work together with us
in our struggle as UHCAN-MN.  Just leave your power
trips, hand-wringing, incrementalization strategies
and ass-kissing to the corporate elite outside the
door. UHCAN-MN is a grassroots, volunteer, activist,
networking, information/education, political change
organization with no paid lobbyist and no "anonymously
donated" $50,000 grant to buy cookies for shepherded
focus groups strategically meeting in huge community
buildings in "targeted" neighborhoods.  This struggle
is too important.  We need to share our energy and our
resources...not engage in selfish, immature parallel
play, in order to get universal single payer health
care passed, NOW!!  So grow up, take heart and have
the moral courage to work with people who are not
overprivileged as you are.
We already know UHCAN and the poor and other
marginalized folks are going to shout truth to power;
now it's time for everyone else to really work with
us.  Sick and dying people need their care, now--
practitioners, elected officials, others don't add to
the health care crisis by hiding behind your petty
fears and privilege. It will not serve you well.  Your
business is to serve those in need and serve us
ethically.  Those of you taking tme to read this will
know what you need to do.  We are not afraid, we are
angry, frustrated and demanding action, NOW!! Get with
us and work with us.
UHCAN-MN doesn't have a budget at the moment.  So...
this is a call out to everyone who can, to PLEASE make
copies of our UHCAN Flyers or donate funds, copiers,
paper, ink to us so that we can create thousand sof
flyers and distribute then over the next couple weeks
to draw attention to the cause via SICKO.  We also
need volunteers to distribute flyers before, during
and immediately after the first screenings.  I f you
have the heart, time and ability to do any of this,
please contact Joel Albers or myself, Stefanie Levi
via phoe or email.
  For a work night and good food, come to the action
preparation potluck at my home on Monday 18 June at
6:00 p. m.

Peace Love Solidarity,
  Stefanie Levi




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Friends,

I am an advocate of compromise where it makes sense.  However, if private
insurance corporations are kept as insurers or operators of the system, it
will only lead to universal rejection of the system, as has been the
world-wide experience -- probably to include Massachusetts.  The enormous
inefficiencies of these corporations with their enormous bureaucracies, is
the reason that US costs are twice typical expenses around the world and
provides inferior outcomes.  Their costs add some fifty percent total to
the costs of an income-tax-based system.

The reasons the national figure is lower is because Medicare's
administrative costs amount to only 3% and that the lower figure also
fails to include the enormous costs to care providers of the massive
paperwork the private companies require in their efforts to avoid promised
care.

Adding all residents of the country to Medicare would be a good start as
an initial compromise which could be quickly implemented and is
politically possible with adequate grass-roots support:  that is the
critical element!

Dennis Kucinich's proposals in this regard involve such compromises for
discussion.  John Edwards proposals on his web site do not!

-----Original Message-----
From: David Moseman <moseman@...>
To: uhcan-mn@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tue, 12 Jun 2007 3:47 pm
Subject: RE: [uhcan-mn] NY Times Op-Ed: A Short American Life

Heya, All!

Please RSVP, if you can and know for sure you're
coming to the potluck on Monday 18 June at 6:oo p. m.

Love and Thanks, Stefanie Levi



________________________________________________________________________________\
____
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to amazing places on Yahoo! Travel.
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Thanks Joan, Joel & Gene!

I've only had time to quick skim what Joan and Joel
have written...But, responding to what I think is the
gist of what all three of you are saying; my own
protective, activist "paranoia" about politicians,
lobbyists, et al, appropriating and distorting what a
real universal single payer health care system is; and
based on the kissing ass and coddling of the corporate
elite and other over-privileged people that I
witnessed Keith Ellison engage in yesterday, during
his presentation at the Humphrey Institute, I know
that we have a critical and deep fight at hand to
ensure that universal single payer isn't at all fucked
with by corporate/elitist interests and bastardized by
politicians before it even gets to the table.  It's
really got to be the totally egalitarian way or the
high way, or else we'll perpetuate an unjust, tiered,
unsustainable health care system in this goddamned
country for the next several hundred years..if
humanoids are even destined to live that much
longer...Y'all know what I'm saying.
Between Joel, John and Kip, we have more than enough
research to show that real, honest-to-goddess,
universal single payer is the only just and
economically sustainable model to use--we really
shouldn't be wasting time as a group discussing what's
happening in other countries that are being forced
towards more privatization allowances in their
socialized health care models... That's not to say
that we couldn't educate and discuss with one another
about these issues; let's delegate/relegate them to a
mini teach-in session or two for health care policy
wonks and wannabes.  We could also devote time that
way to sharing knowledge re Marty's  and others'
ditzing around with the issue at the state level.
Hell, I'd go to any of those, if I can fit it into my
schedule.

That said, I propose that we really focus our
time/energy/resources on single-mindedly and
multi-laterally educating the public and those who are
supposedly elected to so-called represent us on what
single payer universal health care really is and
collectively demanding and ensuring that we get it
enacted at the national level, NOW!!!!!  Yeah, yeah, I
know, we are called UHCAN-Mn..but we know we deserve,
need, demand universal single payer at the national
level.  We don't need to be "nice", passive/aggressive
MN-style, or otherwise. We need to be effective, loud,
well-researched, fun, accessible to the real people,
principled, able to work well together with folks who
are on power-trips and act elitist--(because we may
need them to do the work and access resources more
efficiently, than our shoe-string, strung out, grass
roots organization can alone!).  If we do that, and we
educate as many folks as possible and hold our
so-called elected officials accountable to our cause
and vision constantly, we can get this passed.  Idf we
give in to corporate elitists and whiney, privileged
progressives, we'll stay screwed.

Let's use the momentum before and after Michel Moore's
SICKO is released to push this fight for our human
rights forward.  Speak truth to power and force the
change NOW!!

SORRY to sound so bossy;  I'm tired of watching others
with more health needs than myself and my family not
have have health care.
  Joyously SAssy, Brassy and Activist and still
uninsured,  I am truly your sister,
Stefanie levi
--- Gene Taylor <taylo011@...> wrote:

> Thanks, Joel.  Appreciate your reviews as I am
> struggling with such critiques that could undermine
> rather than clarify or reinforce certain issues.  Am
> just concerned that we can iron out some risky parts
> in time to get the 57 coauthors clear and not off to
> variations we cant live with.
>
>
> Sincerely,
> Gene Taylor
> taylo011@...
> H: 651-602-6060
> 293 Lexington Pkwy South
> St. Paul, MN  55105
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: joel michael albers
> To: uhcan-mn@yahoogroups.com
> Cc: undisclosed-recipients:
> Sent: Monday, June 11, 2007 7:02 PM
> Subject: Re: [uhcan-mn] SN Marty's "single-payer"
> bill is NOT single-payer
>
>
>
> After thoroughly reading John Marty's bill SF 2324,
> I disagree with Kip's suggestion that SF 2324 is not
> a single-payer bill.
> Single-payer means all payment comes from a single
> source, the government.
>
> Here are some excerpts and my own interpretation of
> the bill which i believe make it a reasonable SP
> bill, or at least a good starting point for one:
>
> Page 2 of SF 2324, PROHIBITION: states, "no health
> plan... may be sold in MN for services provided by
> the plan." Plan" here means the MN Health Care Plan,
> whose PURPOSE is: "to provide affordable coverage
> for all necessary health care with a single standard
> of care for all MN residents."
>
> Article 3, FUNDING, on page 12 (b) of the bill
> states "All money collected, ..... shall be
> transmitted to the state treasury.... for health
> care for the purpose of financing the MN health care
> plan." This essentially strips away the role of
> private insurers as insurers.
>
>
>   Kip's interpretation is that quote, " the bill
> calls for huge provider networks (hospital-clinic
> chains) and authorizes these chains to act just
>   like insurance companies, including accepting a
> lump sum payment from the state to provide
> "comprehensive medical services"...
>
> My interpretation of the bill is that the bill
> actually strips out the authority to act like
> insurance companies,yet permits HMOs to deliver care
> if they own hospitals or clinics. The bill calls
> these "Integrated Health Care Systems",and this
> probably includes hospital-clinic chains and current
> HMOs under two major conditions: 1) that they
> actually deliver care, and 2) that they are
> allocated an operating budget (specifically for
> patient care), a SEPARATE capital budget, and a
> SEPARATE budget to limit excessive "upper level
> manager' , "executive", and practitioner pay.
>
> Page 16, Sec 9 states, "It is the intent of this
> chapter to establish a SINGLE PUBLIC PAYER for all
> health care in the state of MN.
>
> To me the bill seems reasonable and is a
> single-payer bill, yet based on the reality of big
> hospital chains and big HMOs. It would nice to break
> these down along the way.
>
> Strategically, it seems to make sense to keep both
> single-payer bills in play.
>
> joel
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Monday, June 11, 2007, at 12:38 PM, Joan Malerich
> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>   The following is taken from the June 11th
> Progressive Calendar, moderated by David Shove
>
>   This is no surprise to me. I doubt if Kip Sullivan
> is surprised. As Kip points out, Marty's bill is not
> a universal SINGLE-PAYER bill. I like Marty and
> understand that there is a possibility he is
> confused about what single-payer is or is not,
> though he should know the difference by now. This is
> just one more vivid example of how even a "good"
> person cannot function in the current state
> legislature (nor is the US Congress). And, until the
> money and political ads are out of campaigning and
> politics, it is absurd to think that anything will
> significantly change. Best thing to do is boycott
> the elections until the money and political ads are
> out, and use all the time, money and energy that
> goes into the current political system to establish
> real people power that will fuel a government that
> works for the people.
>
>   Socialism or Nothing!---Joan
>
>   --------14 of 18--------
>
>   Date: Sat, 9 Jun 2007 05:16:56 -0500
>   From: Kip Sullivan <kiprs@...>
>   Subject: John Marty's new "single-payer" bill
>
>   I just saw the announcement Greens met with John
> Marty this morning. A big
>   new issue has arisen since we spoke last. John
> introduced a bill (SF 2324)
>   during the waning hours of the last session that
> he believes is a "single
>   payer" bill that isn't a single-payer bill. It
> isn't a single-payer bill
>   because it permits insurance companies to continue
> to operate. My guess is
>   John doesn't understand that and sincerely
> believes his bill is a
>   single-payer bill.
>
>   The bill has opening language that is quite
> similar to the opening
>   language of the single-payer bill I and all other
> single-payer advocates
>   have supported in MN since 1991. Currently that
> bill is SF 460 (Sen Leo
>   Foley is the chief author and John is a
> co-author). The opening language
>   in SF 2324 would lead any casual reader to think
> the bill is a
>   single-payer bill. But the text of the bill calls
> for huge provider
>   networks (hospital-clinic chains) and authorizes
> these chains to act just
>   like insurance companies, including accepting a
> lump sum payment from the
>   state to provide "comprehensive medical services"
> to citizens who "enroll"
>   with the network. Have you ever heard of someone
> "enrolling" with the Mayo
>   Clinic? Of course not. One "enrolls" with
> HealthPartners or Medicaid, but
>   not a clinic or hospital.
>
>   So "provider" in John's bill means insurance
> company. My interpretation
>   was confirmed by House DFL Caucus Research today.
> That office released a
>   three-page summary of SF 2324 and its House
> companion (HF 2522) which
>   states that SF 2324 permits the state to contract
> with "health plans." Any
>   proposal that lets "health plans" contract with
> the state is not a
>   single-payer bill.
>
>   The best course for you at this late date is to
> simply ask John why he
>   wrote a new "single-payer" bill when SF 460
> already existed and John is
>   listed as a co-author. The advocates of SF 2324
> have yet to say anything
>   publicly about the bill other than it is a
> wonderful single-payer bill. If
>   you could get John to agree to write up an
> explanation for why he wrote a
>   new "single-payer" bill and specifically what
> provisions in SF 2324 are
>   superior to which provisions in SF 460, that would
> be a great help.
>
>   Here's a brief explanation of how John may have
> been misled into thinking
>   SF 2324 is a single-payer bill. The bill is
> modeled on SB 840 in CA, a
>   bill that the CA single-payer movement calls a
> "single-payer" bill. (This
>   bill passed the CA legislature last August and was
> vetoed by
>   Schwartznegger.) Unfortunately, the single-payer
> movement in CA
>
=== message truncated ===




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Kip's interpretation is that quote, " the bill calls for huge provider networks (hospital-clinic chains) and authorizes these chains to act just
like insurance companies, including accepting a lump sum payment from the state to provide "comprehensive medical services"...

The following is taken from the June 11th Progressive Calendar, moderated by David Shove

This is no surprise to me. I doubt if Kip Sullivan is surprised. As Kip points out, Marty's bill is not a universal SINGLE-PAYER bill. I like Marty and understand that there is a possibility he is confused about what single-payer is or is not, though he should know the difference by now. This is just one more vivid example of how even a "good" person cannot function in the current state legislature (nor is the US Congress). And, until the money and political ads are out of campaigning and politics, it is absurd to think that anything will significantly change. Best thing to do is boycott the elections until the money and political ads are out, and use all the time, money and energy that goes into the current political system to establish real people power that will fuel a government that works for the people.

Socialism or Nothing!---Joan

--------14 of 18--------

Date: Sat, 9 Jun 2007 05:16:56 -0500
From: Kip Sullivan <kiprs@...>
Subject: John Marty's new "single-payer" bill

I just saw the announcement Greens met with John Marty this morning. A big
new issue has arisen since we spoke last. John introduced a bill (SF 2324)
during the waning hours of the last session that he believes is a "single
payer" bill that isn't a single-payer bill. It isn't a single-payer bill
because it permits insurance companies to continue to operate. My guess is
John doesn't understand that and sincerely believes his bill is a
single-payer bill.

The bill has opening language that is quite similar to the opening
language of the single-payer bill I and all other single-payer advocates
have supported in MN since 1991. Currently that bill is SF 460 (Sen Leo
Foley is the chief author and John is a co-author). The opening language
in SF 2324 would lead any casual reader to think the bill is a
single-payer bill. But the text of the bill calls for huge provider
networks (hospital-clinic chains) and authorizes these chains to act just
like insurance companies, including accepting a lump sum payment from the
state to provide "comprehensive medical services" to citizens who "enroll"
with the network. Have you ever heard of someone "enrolling" with the Mayo
Clinic? Of course not. One "enrolls" with HealthPartners or Medicaid, but
not a clinic or hospital.

So "provider" in John's bill means insurance company. My interpretation
was confirmed by House DFL Caucus Research today. That office released a
three-page summary of SF 2324 and its House companion (HF 2522) which
states that SF 2324 permits the state to contract with "health plans." Any
proposal that lets "health plans" contract with the state is not a
single-payer bill.

The best course for you at this late date is to simply ask John why he
wrote a new "single-payer" bill when SF 460 already existed and John is
listed as a co-author. The advocates of SF 2324 have yet to say anything
publicly about the bill other than it is a wonderful single-payer bill. If
you could get John to agree to write up an explanation for why he wrote a
new "single-payer" bill and specifically what provisions in SF 2324 are
superior to which provisions in SF 460, that would be a great help.

Here's a brief explanation of how John may have been misled into thinking
SF 2324 is a single-payer bill. The bill is modeled on SB 840 in CA, a
bill that the CA single-payer movement calls a "single-payer" bill. (This
bill passed the CA legislature last August and was vetoed by
Schwartznegger.) Unfortunately, the single-payer movement in CA
deliberately wrote an exemption in SB 840 to permit Kaiser Permanente, a
huge HMO in CA, to continue to operate. I have been told by two people
involved in drafting SB 840 that they exempted Kaiser Permanente not
because it is a virtuous HMO that does all the wonderful things HMOs were
supposed to do, but because it is big and powerful in CA. But the
exemption they wrote is so broad and mushy that virtually any insurance
company that can claim it "manages" doctors will squeeze through that
loophole. By using the same mushy loophole SB 840 uses, John has imported
into MN the identical problem SB 840 has.

There are other problems with SF 2324, including a provision that
prohibits citizens from seeing specialists unless they visit their primary
care doc first and persuade the primary care doc they need to see a
dermatologist, neurologist, etc. But the huge fundamental problem is that
SF 2324 permits health insurance companies to feed at the public trough.
If you permit that, there's no way you can save on administrative costs,
which is single-payer's principle advantage over all other proposals.

Kip

Hey, All!
Thanks for everything you're doing to keep the fight
for universal single payer focused and vibrant.
With the Twin Cities' opening date of Michael Moore's
"SICKO" so close at hand--29 June--we need to come
together to work out direct actions for the opening
screenings and the lead-up to them.

So...I'm hosting a working potluck at my house on
Monday, 18 June--next week.  The potluck theme is
"delicious and nutritious traditional foods from
countries the pretzel-choker in the oval office
hates"--which, basically, includes foods from any
country affected by "climate change"!!--since he hates
even the u. s. of a. All political jocularity aside, I
will be cookin' up a couple of vegetarian middle
eastern dishes; feel free to bring whatever.  Keep it
no muss/no fuss for yourselves..but it would be great
to not have too much dessert-y stuff.  If anyone can't
bring food for whatever reason, please come to the
potluck meeting, anyway.  All are welcome.

We just need creativity & solidarity to spice up and
strengthen our actions.  for those so inclined, please
come with a mock-up or rough-draft flyer.  We'll
probably need two flyers:  one to announce the
upcoming screening, and the other would be basically
brief and informational, maybe using images, slogans
or quotes from "SICKO."

Peace Love Solidarity Socialism with Bona Fide Single
Payer Universal Health Care Now,

Stefanie Levi

612-822-2974

Home address:  3833 12th Ave South
                 Minneapolis 55407



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After thoroughly reading John Marty's bill SF 2324, I  disagree with
Kip's suggestion that SF 2324 is not a single-payer bill.
Single-payer means all payment comes from a single source, the
government.

Here are some excerpts and my own interpretation of the bill which i
believe make it a reasonable SP bill, or at least a good starting point
for one:

Page 2 of SF 2324, PROHIBITION: states, "no health plan... may be sold
in MN for services provided by the plan." Plan" here means the MN
Health Care Plan, whose PURPOSE is: "to provide affordable coverage for
all necessary health care with a single standard of care for all MN
residents."

   Article 3, FUNDING, on page 12 (b) of the bill states "All money
collected, ..... shall be transmitted to the state treasury.... for
health care for the purpose of financing the MN health care plan."
This essentially strips away the role of private insurers as insurers.

> Kip's interpretation is that quote, " the bill calls for huge provider
> networks (hospital-clinic chains) and authorizes these chains to act
> just
> like insurance companies, including accepting a lump sum payment from
> the state to provide "comprehensive medical services"...
My interpretation of the bill is that the bill actually strips out the
authority to act like insurance companies,yet permits HMOs to deliver
care if they own hospitals or clinics. The bill calls these "Integrated
Health Care Systems",and this probably includes hospital-clinic chains
and current HMOs under two major conditions: 1) that they actually
deliver care, and 2) that they are allocated an operating budget
(specifically for patient care), a SEPARATE  capital budget, and a
SEPARATE budget to limit excessive  "upper level manager' ,
"executive", and practitioner pay.

Page 16, Sec 9 states, "It is the intent of this chapter to establish a
SINGLE PUBLIC PAYER for all health care in the state of MN.

To me the bill seems reasonable and is a single-payer bill, yet based
on the reality of big hospital chains and big HMOs. It would nice to
break these down along the way.

Strategically, it seems to make sense to keep both single-payer bills
in play.

joel



>



On Monday, June 11, 2007, at 12:38 PM, Joan Malerich wrote:

>
>
> The following is taken from the June 11th Progressive Calendar,
> moderated by David Shove
>
> This is no surprise to me.  I doubt if Kip Sullivan is surprised.  As
> Kip points out, Marty's bill is not a universal SINGLE-PAYER bill.  I
> like Marty and understand that  there is a possibility he is confused
> about what single-payer is or is not, though he should know the
> difference by now.  This is just one more vivid example of how even a
> "good" person cannot function in the current state legislature (nor is
> the US Congress).  And, until the money and political ads are out of
> campaigning and politics, it is absurd to think that anything will
> significantly change.  Best thing to do is boycott the elections until
> the money and political ads are out, and use all the time, money and
> energy that goes into the current political system to establish real
> people power that will fuel a government that works for the people.
>
> Socialism or Nothing!---Joan
>
> --------14 of 18--------
>
> Date: Sat, 9 Jun 2007 05:16:56 -0500
> From: Kip Sullivan <kiprs@...>
> Subject: John Marty's new "single-payer" bill
>
> I just saw the announcement Greens met with John Marty this morning. A
> big
> new issue has arisen since we spoke last. John introduced a bill (SF
> 2324)
> during the waning hours of the last session that he believes is a
> "single
> payer" bill that isn't a single-payer bill. It isn't a single-payer
> bill
> because it permits insurance companies to continue to operate. My
> guess is
> John doesn't understand that and sincerely believes his bill is a
> single-payer bill.
>
> The bill has opening language that is quite similar to the opening
> language of the single-payer bill I and all other single-payer
> advocates
> have supported in MN since 1991. Currently that bill is SF 460 (Sen Leo
> Foley is the chief author and John is a co-author). The opening
> language
> in SF 2324 would lead any casual reader to think the bill is a
> single-payer bill. But the text of the bill calls for huge provider
> networks (hospital-clinic chains) and authorizes these chains to act
> just
> like insurance companies, including accepting a lump sum payment from
> the
> state to provide "comprehensive medical services" to citizens who
> "enroll"
> with the network. Have you ever heard of someone "enrolling" with the
> Mayo
> Clinic? Of course not. One "enrolls" with HealthPartners or Medicaid,
> but
> not a clinic or hospital.
>
> So "provider" in John's bill means insurance company. My interpretation
> was confirmed by House DFL Caucus Research today. That office released
> a
> three-page summary of SF 2324 and its House companion (HF 2522) which
> states that SF 2324 permits the state to contract with "health plans."
> Any
> proposal that lets "health plans" contract with the state is not a
> single-payer bill.
>
> The best course for you at this late date is to simply ask John why he
> wrote a new "single-payer" bill when SF 460 already existed and John is
> listed as a co-author. The advocates of SF 2324 have yet to say
> anything
> publicly about the bill other than it is a wonderful single-payer
> bill. If
> you could get John to agree to write up an explanation for why he
> wrote a
> new "single-payer" bill and specifically what provisions in SF 2324 are
> superior to which provisions in SF 460, that would be a great help.
>
> Here's a brief explanation of how John may have been misled into
> thinking
> SF 2324 is a single-payer bill. The bill is modeled on SB 840 in CA, a
> bill that the CA single-payer movement calls a "single-payer" bill.
> (This
> bill passed the CA legislature last August and was vetoed by
> Schwartznegger.) Unfortunately, the single-payer movement in CA
> deliberately wrote an exemption in SB 840 to permit Kaiser Permanente,
> a
> huge HMO in CA, to continue to operate. I have been told by two people
> involved in drafting SB 840 that they exempted Kaiser Permanente not
> because it is a virtuous HMO that does all the wonderful things HMOs
> were
> supposed to do, but because it is big and powerful in CA. But the
> exemption they wrote is so broad and mushy that virtually any insurance
> company that can claim it "manages" doctors will squeeze through that
> loophole. By using the same mushy loophole SB 840 uses, John has
> imported
> into MN the identical problem SB 840 has.
>
> There are other problems with SF 2324, including a provision that
> prohibits citizens from seeing specialists unless they visit their
> primary
> care doc first and persuade the primary care doc they need to see a
> dermatologist, neurologist, etc. But the huge fundamental problem is
> that
> SF 2324 permits health insurance companies to feed at the public
> trough.
> If you permit that, there's no way you can save on administrative
> costs,
> which is single-payer's principle advantage over all other proposals.
>
> Kip
>
>
Joel Albers  Ph.D., Pharm.D.
Health Care Economics Researcher, Clinical Pharmacist
Universal Health Care Action Network Minnesota
Community/University Collaborative Research
612-384-0973
joel@...
www.uhcan-mn.org

The following is taken from the June 11th Progressive Calendar, moderated by David Shove This is no surprise to me. I doubt if Kip Sullivan is surprised. As Kip points out, Marty's bill is not a universal SINGLE-PAYER bill. I like Marty and understand that there is a possibility he is confused about what single-payer is or is not, though he should know the difference by now. This is just one more vivid example of how even a "good" person cannot function in the current state legislature (nor is the US Congress). And, until the money and political ads are out of campaigning and politics, it is absurd to think that anything will significantly change. Best thing to do is boycott the elections until the money and political ads are out, and use all the time, money and energy that goes into the current political system to establish real people power that will fuel a government that works for the people. Socialism or Nothing!---Joan
--------14 of 18--------
Date: Sat, 9 Jun 2007 05:16:56 -0500
From: Kip Sullivan <kiprs@...>
Subject: John Marty's new "single-payer" bill
I just saw the announcement Greens met with John Marty this morning. A big
new issue has arisen since we spoke last. John introduced a bill (SF 2324)
during the waning hours of the last session that he believes is a "single
payer" bill that isn't a single-payer bill. It isn't a single-payer bill
because it permits insurance companies to continue to operate. My guess is
John doesn't understand that and sincerely believes his bill is a
single-payer bill.
The bill has opening language that is quite similar to the opening
language of the single-payer bill I and all other single-payer advocates
have supported in MN since 1991. Currently that bill is SF 460 (Sen Leo
Foley is the chief author and John is a co-author). The opening language
in SF 2324 would lead any casual reader to think the bill is a
single-payer bill. But the text of the bill calls for huge provider
networks (hospital-clinic chains) and authorizes these chains to act just
like insurance companies, including accepting a lump sum payment from the
state to provide "comprehensive medical services" to citizens who "enroll"
with the network. Have you ever heard of someone "enrolling" with the Mayo
Clinic? Of course not. One "enrolls" with HealthPartners or Medicaid, but
not a clinic or hospital.
So "provider" in John's bill means insurance company. My interpretation
was confirmed by House DFL Caucus Research today. That office released a
three-page summary of SF 2324 and its House companion (HF 2522) which
states that SF 2324 permits the state to contract with "health plans." Any
proposal that lets "health plans" contract with the state is not a
single-payer bill.
The best course for you at this late date is to simply ask John why he
wrote a new "single-payer" bill when SF 460 already existed and John is
listed as a co-author. The advocates of SF 2324 have yet to say anything
publicly about the bill other than it is a wonderful single-payer bill. If
you could get John to agree to write up an explanation for why he wrote a
new "single-payer" bill and specifically what provisions in SF 2324 are
superior to which provisions in SF 460, that would be a great help.
Here's a brief explanation of how John may have been misled into thinking
SF 2324 is a single-payer bill. The bill is modeled on SB 840 in CA, a
bill that the CA single-payer movement calls a "single-payer" bill. (This
bill passed the CA legislature last August and was vetoed by
Schwartznegger.) Unfortunately, the single-payer movement in CA
deliberately wrote an exemption in SB 840 to permit Kaiser Permanente, a
huge HMO in CA, to continue to operate. I have been told by two people
involved in drafting SB 840 that they exempted Kaiser Permanente not
because it is a virtuous HMO that does all the wonderful things HMOs were
supposed to do, but because it is big and powerful in CA. But the
exemption they wrote is so broad and mushy that virtually any insurance
company that can claim it "manages" doctors will squeeze through that
loophole. By using the same mushy loophole SB 840 uses, John has imported
into MN the identical problem SB 840 has.
There are other problems with SF 2324, including a provision that
prohibits citizens from seeing specialists unless they visit their primary
care doc first and persuade the primary care doc they need to see a
dermatologist, neurologist, etc. But the huge fundamental problem is that
SF 2324 permits health insurance companies to feed at the public trough.
If you permit that, there's no way you can save on administrative costs,
which is single-payer's principle advantage over all other proposals.
Kip

Dear UHCAN-MN Activists,

The UHCAN-MN mtg tuesday was, i thought, productive, well-attended, and
participatory with thoughtful brainstorming ideas/actions. 13 in
attendance were Ann, June, Verna, Orel, shawn, John, dorothy, stefanie,
Dan, Gary,Kate,Kristine, joel. Here's what we came up with:

1.Sicko Film:  This is a huge outreach opportunity.
We formed an Action Team (but all are welcome) to coordinate actions
for the upcoming "Sicko" Film, premieres June 29 in theaters
everywhere. Mtg at Stefanie's house June 18th, 6PM, 3833 12th ave S.
potluck, to coordinate on leafleting at theaters, f/u Forums, Parties
etc. Please brainstorm on ways we can get the word out for the cure for
"Sicko", Single-Payer. We talked about designing a very eye-catching
flyer that will activate people off the couch  like "what you can do",
such as submit your personal story, get on the list serve, come to a
mtg, do demos

2. Continue Picketing Bill "ionaire" Mcguire and United HoldUp Group
HMO Court Litigation in Mpls. Find out where/when, send out press
release to media, continue to expose HMOs, create debate, live the
alternative, demonstrate what's possible. The civil lawsuits are in
Mpls district court at Henn Cty Govt center, and the criminal lawsuits
most likely at the federal Bldg DT Mpls. If you know when/where these
are, let us know.

3. People needed to Table, Flyer,cheerlead, or otherwise do creative or
educational outreach at Summer Festivals, Parades, Picnics, Conferences
etc. We have flyers, lit, UHCAN-MN exhibit board etc. Here is a list of
locations, dates, times, which we need help completing so people can
know where, when etc. and hit up these places:

Festivals, Parades:
Spring Art Party (Northside Arts Collective), Sat 6/9/07, 10-6
Sabathani Fertival, 6/9
Juneteenth, 6/16
Pride Festival, 6/23-4 10-6,(parade sunday 10-2)
Afrifest
Immigrant Rrights, Brian Coyle Ctr 6/20
WAMM 25th anniv
Artcar Parade 7/21
Uptown Art Fair
Powderhorn Art Fair
State Fair
County Fairs
We need more on SUBURBAN Fests, Parades

Music:
Mill City Ruin outside Museum, thurs eves
Peavey Plaza, Alive After five, Music,month of June, 5-8:30
Minnnehaha Park
Lake Harriet Bandshell
many others

Neighborhood Gatherings:
National Night Out
Ice Cream socials
Community Ctr Events

Picnics:
religious
labor day

Conferences:
?

thanks,
joel







Joel Albers  Ph.D., Pharm.D.
Health Care Economics Researcher, Clinical Pharmacist
Universal Health Care Action Network Minnesota
Community/University Collaborative Research
612-384-0973
joel@...
www.uhcan-mn.org

PLEASE NOTE: The event to organize around the Republican National
Convention (RNC) in September 2008 is still taking place this Saturday,
BUT, the location has changed from the St Paul Trades and Labor Building
to the Student Center of the U of M St Paul campus.

__________________________________________________________

Sat, June 9th, 2pm
Resisting the RNC: Minnesota Town Hall Organizing Meeting

NEW LOCATION:
U of M - St. Paul Student Center
2017 Buford Ave, St. Paul, MN

Directions and parking info:
www.spsc.umn.edu/about/directions.php



The Republican National Convention (RNC) is coming to our backyard.
Feeling angry?  Want to do something?

Please join us for a gathering of those who have already started
organizing to resist the RNC in 2008 and those looking for a place to
start.  This will be a space for people to come together and share ideas
and energy.

The afternoon will be broken into 3 parts.  We'll start with a
"clearinghouse" where organizations can table and have an opportunity to
chat with attendees one-on-one.  This will be followed by a facilitated
"open mic" discussion period.  Discussion will start with explanations
about what is already underway, and continue with attendees sharing their
hopes, dreams, and visions with each other.  The day will conclude with
"break out" sessions where participants gather around specific topics of
interest and decide on "next steps."

Let's meet each other, get to know each other, and start to work together!

Child Care and Snacks Provided.

Co-hosted by: Protest RNC 2008 and the RNC "Welcoming" Committee

To increase your participation level please contact Karen R at:
vegan14ever@....  Increased participation could include: having an
information table, presenting your "already underway" plans, and/or
volunteering to help with the event.

Health Care as if Costs Didn’t Matter

In a saner world, the place where you live wouldn’t have much effect on how doctors treated your back problems. In our world, it can make all the difference.

In Idaho Falls, Idaho, anyone suffering from the sort of lower back pain that may conceivably be helped by the fusing of two vertebrae is quite likely to have the surgery. It’s known as lumbar fusion, and the rate at which it is performed in Idaho Falls is almost five times the national average. The rate in Idaho Falls is 20 times that in Bangor, Me., where lumbar fusion is less common than anywhere else.

These numbers come from the wonderful Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care. The Dartmouth researchers adjust the numbers to take into account age, race and sex, which is another way of saying that there is no good explanation for the huge variations they find. Doctors in the Idaho Falls area are probably just being more aggressive than doctors elsewhere.

But it’s not clear that their patients are any better off. The evidence for lumbar fusion is incredibly mixed. It seems to help people with certain kinds of pain, but many others recover just as well without the surgery. Of course, doctors are almost always better off if the surgery is done: The typical hospital bill for lumbar fusion is roughly $50,000.

This is about as good an example as you can find of the health care mess. The number of lumbar fusions performed in this country has more than tripled since the early 1990s, and Medicare now spends more than $600 million a year on the procedure. It’s one reason your health insurance bill has gone up.

Now stop and ask yourself a quick question about the lumbar fusion story: Does it have anything to do with the fact that almost 50 million people in this country don’t have health insurance? Clearly, it does not. And that’s precisely the problem with the current debate over health care reform.

After more than a decade in the wilderness, health care has returned to the center of the political discussion. But the only topic getting any serious attention is universal health insurance. It’s the entire point of the ambitious new program in Massachusetts and a similar proposal in California. Universal coverage has dominated both the news media’s coverage of the Democratic presidential candidates’ reform ideas and the candidates’ own jockeying over those ideas.

In a debate in New Hampshire on Sunday night, John Edwards needled Barack Obama for offering a plan that wasn’t “completely universal.” (A fair criticism.) Mr. Obama’s aides like to counter that Mr. Edwards is underestimating the cost and logistical difficulties of covering every last person. (That’s probably fair, too.) People in both campaigns are fond of pointing out that Hillary Clinton still hasn’t come up with her own plan for universal coverage. In the 2008 campaign, expanded health insurance is apparently the new “middle class”: there’s an arms race to see who can be most in favor of it.

Let me add my name to the list of fans before the e-mail starts pouring in. Universal coverage is a great idea. The unlikely crew of Democratic state legislators, Republican governors and Democratic presidential candidates who have forced the issue onto the agenda deserve enormous credit. A world where everyone could afford health insurance — where no one had to choose between fixing a cavity and paying the rent — would be a much better place.

But if we are really at the start of a once-in-a-generation push to fix health care, we need to be clear about the true problem. The main reason so many people lack health insurance is because of its cost. And a big reason for that cost is the explosion of expensive, medically questionable care, be it knee replacement, preventive angioplasty or lumbar fusion. The route to an affordable health insurance solution runs straight through this thicket.

Along these lines, the three leading Democratic candidates have quietly come up with nearly identical ideas. Deep inside their health care plans, Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Edwards and Mr. Obama have each called for the creation of a national institute to figure out which kinds of medical care actually work. This institute would sort through the scientific research on, say, spinal fusion and help people understand when it may make sense and when it’s likely to be just another big medical expense that doesn’t solve anything.

Medicare and private insurers could then use the research findings to determine when a procedure or a drug would be covered. There would be room for exceptions, based on a doctor’s judgment. In general, though, a doctor and a patient could proceed with dubious treatment only if they didn’t stick the rest of us with the bill.

So far, the candidates have been careful to describe the institute as a place that would merely collect and distribute information, not one with the power to block wasteful spending. To pay for expanded health insurance, they are instead focusing on unobjectionable (and unproven) ways to save money, like computerized medical records. “None of the candidates have offered a specific plan to seriously rein in the growth of health care costs,” says Jonathan Skinner, an economist at Dartmouth who works on the Atlas of Health Care.

But campaign advisers acknowledge that any institute will ultimately help set insurance payments, and they are not the only ones pushing the idea. Peter Orszag, the head of the Congressional Budget Office, has mentioned it when talking about the fiscal disaster that awaits if Medicare spending isn’t slowed. A number of Republican health care experts also favor some sort of cost-effectiveness institute. It’s another way to cut wasteful government spending.

Still, we shouldn’t be naïve: a lot of people would lose if medical care came to be based more on what actually worked. Right now, drug companies and medical device makers can go to the Food and Drug Administration and get approval for an expensive new product so long as they show that it’s as effective as its predecessor. They can then turn around and suggest to doctors that the new product is more effective than its predecessor. The doctors often profit, too. And many patients demand the latest, most expensive procedure, regardless of the evidence.

So reforming the system will require a fight — not just over the meaning of the word “universal” but also over finding tough, sensible ways to save money. As David Cutler, one of the Obama campaign’s health care advisers, said, “These things are really hard, so they ought to be in the foreground.”

The simple truth is that medical spending can’t continue to rise at its current rate. Somehow, we need to make choices.

E-mail: Leonhardt@...

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Hey Folks,

We have a great tabling opportunity for getting the word out about
single-payer,
health care for artists etc at the Northside Arts Collective Arts
Festival this saturday,
from 10 AM-6PM, North Commons Park, 15th & James, North Mpls.

Is there anyone out there who can table (distribute UHCAN-MN health
care literature)
esp from 1PM-6PM or whatever. They waived the $40 fee because they
understand that
many artists are not only starving, but don't have health insurance.
In addition to art there
will be music, food and just fun. We will be next to a friend of mine
so if you need time to
roam that's fine.

If interested in volunteering, i can email you all the info. Let me
know ASAP if you can do this
fun event.

thanks,
joel

Joel Albers
Universal Health Care Action Network Minnesota
612-384-0973
joel@...
www.uhcan-mn.org
Health Care Economics Researcher, Clinical Pharmacist

Below are excerpts from an article regarding Michael Moore and his Sicko film
which is getting so much attention.  Yet, NOT ONCE have I heard a comment 
questioning Moore's claim that his primary intention regarding going to Cuba was to make
a big deal out of the alleged terrorists allegedly getting "excellent medical care." 

This is such an insult to those tortured victims at Guantanamo, especially those who
committed suicide because the situation was so bad. There is such irony in the fact 
that so many health-care groups are making hay off of this film, while not realizing
that there will never be Universal Single Payer Health Care until we, the people, 
stop all of the US terrorist wars that take up all of the US taxpayers' money and 
still plunge our economy into an astronomical debt AND until we change our system.  

Anyone who believes that Moore never intended to seek access to Cuba's health-care
system is simply not thinking this through, and I think I can find a bridge to sell
those people. 

I am not giving the whole article, but those interested can go to the site/link given below. 
I meant to send this out sooner, but lost the articles when I shut off the computer.  Today,
I went to the NY Transfer archives to obtain it. 

Socialism or Nothing!----Joan 


FOLLOWING ARE EXCERPTS FROM:  AP via KTVU - May 19, 2007
http://www.ktvu.com/entertainment/13351719/detail.html
Sicko' Patients Thank Moore For Cuba Trip

Lost in all the publicity over Moore's trip is the reason he went to
Cuba in the first place.

He said he hadn't intended to go, but then discovered the U.S.
government was boasting of the excellent medical care it provides
terror suspects detained at Guantanamo. So Moore decided that the 9/11
workers and a few other patients, all of whom had serious trouble
paying for care at home, should have the same chance.

"Here the detainees were getting colonoscopies and nutrition
counseling," Moore told The Associated Press in an interview, "and
these people at home were suffering. I said, 'We gotta go and see if we
can get these people the same treatment the government gives al-Qaida.'
It seemed the only fair thing to do."

So the group, which included eight patients -- three ground zero
workers and five others -- headed off by boat toward Guantanamo. From a
distance, with cameras rolling, Moore called out through a bullhorn
that he wanted to bring his friends for treatment at the naval base. He
got no response.

"So there I was with a group of sick people," he says. "What was I
going to do?"

The answer: head to Havana. There, the film shows the group getting
thorough care from kind doctors. They don't have to fill out any long
forms; health care is free in the Communist nation, after all.

But did the American film crew get special treatment because they were,
well, an American film crew? Moore and his producer, Meghan O'Hara,
insist not. "We demanded that we be treated on the same floor as all
Cubans, not the special floor for foreigners," Moore told The AP.
Still, the doctors obviously knew they were being filmed, so it's hard
to know -- although Cervantes said she went back alone with no cameras
and was treated similarly.

Treasury officials will not comment specifically about Moore's case. He
has a few more days to provide additional information. Moore originally
applied in October 2006 for permission to go to Cuba under a provision
for full-time journalists, but never heard back.

I did not have time to read this article, but I thought some on the list would be interested or might know of diabetics who would be interested.
Socialism or Nothing!---Joan
=======================================================
Public Citizen - June 1, 2007
http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/release.cfm?ID=2449
June 1, 2007
Wait Before Using Type 2 Diabetes Drug Januvia, Public Citizen Advises on WorstPills.org
‘Worst Pills, Best Pills’ Subscribers Receive Life-Saving Warnings About Dangerous Drugs Before They Are Removed From the Market
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Januvia (scientific name sitagliptin), a new drug
designed to improve blood sugar control in patients with type 2
diabetes, should not be used because the drug’s long-term safety is
still unknown, Public Citizen writes in a new June posting on its
WorstPills.org Web site.
Clinical study patients who were given Januvia experienced an increase
in the chemical creatinine, which is found in the blood. Increases in
creatinine are often an early indicator of kidney problems. Because the
drug is new, more serious adverse effects may not become apparent until
the drug is used by a large number of patients. Public Citizen advises
consumers not to take the drug until after it has been on the market
for seven years – in this case, until 2014 – without exhibiting
significant health risks.
Diabetes drugs have been under particular scrutiny since a recent study
in the New England Journal of Medicine connected the use of the popular
diabetes drug Avandia to an increased risk of heart attack. Two and a
half years ago, Public Citizen warned people not to use Avandia because
it caused heart failure and is less effective in treating the disease
than older, better known drugs.
“Individuals with type 2 diabetes should wait seven years before taking
Januvia,” said Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of the health research group
at Public Citizen. “They should not be human guinea pigs and risk being
harmed by the adverse effects associated with Januvia that may be
magnified with time, as they were with Avandia.”
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) medical officer charged with
reviewing Januvia’s success stated that the drug’s performance was only
“fairly modest.” Public Citizen maintains that newly marketed type 2
diabetes drugs are often no more potent or effective than the older
diabetes drug families: insulin, the sulfonylureas and the biguanides.
Because Januvia is not a “breakthrough” drug – one that is
significantly more effective than drugs already on the market – Wolfe
advises patients with type 2 diabetes to wait to see if it is truly as
safe as its manufacturer, Merck, claims.
The June updates to the WorstPills.org Web site also discuss
Parkinson’s disease medication Permax (scientific name pergolide) being
pulled from the market because of heart valve damage and the diet drug
Xenical (scientific name orlistat) – about to become available
over-the-counter as Alli – and its connection to gallstones.
Worst Pills, Best Pills is a monthly newsletter available in print and
electronic formats through Public Citizen’s Web site,
www.WorstPills.org. The article about Januvia will be available free on
the site for the next seven days. The site has other searchable
information about the uses, risks and adverse effects associated with
prescription medications, including all the information contained in
Public Citizen’s best-selling book, Worst Pills, Best Pills. More than
200 drugs on the site are listed as DO NOT USE.
Worst Pills is an unbiased analysis of information from a variety of
sources, including well-regarded medical journals and unpublished data
obtained from the FDA that allow Public Citizen to sound the alarm
about potentially dangerous drugs long before they are banned by the
federal government. For example, Public Citizen warned consumers about
the dangers of Vioxx, ephedra, Baycol, Zelnorm and Propulsid years
before they were pulled from the market.

----- Original Message -----

From: Mike Germain

To: uhcan-mn@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Monday, June 04, 2007 6:35 AM

Subject: Re: [uhcan-mn] THE FUTILITY OF LESSER EVIL VOTING

Interesting.  But you don't seem to mind the fact the Ralph Nader's campaign was kept afloat by Republican money, which is verifiable through campaign finance.  I am not giving the Dems cover because they don't deserve it.  Just be honest enough to say you will be happy to have Republicans in office if it means taking out your anger on Dems.

 

If you cannot see they are the lesser of two evils, that is unfortunate.  But please do not pretend that simply voting to make yourself feel better is silver bullet.  If you want to blame something or someone for the difficulties of third parties, look to the constitutional structure of government.  If this were a parlimentary system it would be a nonissue, but it is not.

 

There are scum on ALL sides, that is the nature of humans and politics.  It has been that way since Grog, Nog and Bog argued about who would keep the fire going while the others hunted.  Is what is happening in this convict nations prison system right or just?  Obviously not.  But if you think getting more Republicans elected is going to solve anything, I have just one word, Iraq.

 

It is in fact global corporatism, global capital fascism, call it what you will, that is our foe, not one politician or another.  The simple fact that Nader had no problem with Republican money demonstrates the dualism that often permeates through the system.   Does it suck, is it wrong, and do we need to change it?  Of course.  But please be awake enough to realize that corruption of ideals happens to people, not parties.   And if we want to avoid that corruption of ideas, we just need to work harder educating people.

 

I have spent my entire adult life doing that and have not slowed down just because some too faced political hack pissed me off.  In fact, my anger spurs me on to work harder.

 

Thanks for the post Robert!

 

Mike Germain

----- Original Message -----

From: rhalfhill@juno.com

To: uhcan-mn@yahoogroups.com ; MinnesotaProgressiveCaucus@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Monday, June 04, 2007 5:22 AM

Subject: [uhcan-mn] THE FUTILITY OF LESSER EVIL VOTING

I have a vivid example of just how lesser evil voting causes
people to compromise and virtually destroy their ideals. But first,
I must
take up some space to convey just how bad the Democrats were in this
instance and how far this person was willing to go in abandoning
his ideals.
I became aware of this situation when a former resident of a
Minneapolis suburb, who was then an inmate at Parchman State Prison
in
Mississippi, wrote to ACT-UP/Minnesota seeking help. Most of the HIV
positive inmates at Parchman were getting virtually no medical care,
only
a few even receiving AZT and none getting the three drug treatment
and regular viral load monitoring that in 1997 was becoming the
standard of care for HIV/AIDS. The temperatures in Parchman would
typically reach 100 degrees Fahrenheit during the summers, which with
the humidity common in the Gulf states, was equivalent to 115 to 120
degrees. And any medical professional will tell you that high
temperatures can be deadly to anyone who is debilitated for any
reason, whether it be cancer, AIDS or any other debilitating
illness.
HIV positive inmates would die periodically because of the heat. The
prison
plumbing was so bad that when the toilet in one cell was flushed, the
toilet in the adjacent cell would overflow and drip down onto the
bedding of the inmate in the cell below. During the summer inmates
would have to constantly bat flies away from their food in the mess
hall and, given the propensity of flies to fly around and alight at
random, it is a statistical certainty that some of these flies had
been crawling around in the toilet waste before they alighted on the
inmates food.
The two prison "doctors" had what one inmate descibed as "criminal
medical backgrounds," which meant that previous criminal convictions
had made it impossible for the two "doctors" to work in medicine
anywhere but in a prison. Not only were the HIV positive inmates
receiving virtually no medical care for HIV/AIDS, the inmates were
receiving little or no medical care for any other medical condition
as well. One inmate broke his hand while playing ball. A prison
nurse kept telling the "doctor" he needed to look at the inmate's
hand but the "doctor" kept saying there was nothing wrong with his
hand. He was in pain and in danger of losing his hand for eleven
days
before he was finally transferred to the University of Mississippi
Medical Center. Another inmate had injured his back in an automobile
accident and needed a special mattress. The "doctor" told him that
he had "injured his back before coming to prison" and that "it was
his
responsibility to fix it."
Needless to say, these conditions were equivalent to the death
camps of Nazi Germany and the former Yugoslavia for inmates with
HIV/AIDS.
Now to the point. I had voted for a third party in 1996 after
Wellstone had stated that "marriage was for a man and a woman" and
announced his intention to vote for the Defense Of Marriage Act. But
with Bush running against Gore, I was weakening and thinking that
maybe I had better vote for Gore in 2000. It was then that I read in
the November, 1998 POZ magazine that the same ACLU attorney who was
working on the Parchman case, Margaret Winter, was looking forward to
appealing a case about inmates with HIV/AIDS in Alabama prisons to
the Supreme Court when the Clinton/Gore Administration had filed a
brief on Alabama's side, arguing that the consequences of prisoners
contracting AIDS were so grave that prisoners with HIV had to be
segregated from the other inmates. This segregation included HIV
positive inmates not even being allowed to attend chapel services
with other prisoners. Although the Clinton/Gore Administration
argued that this segregation was necessary, only South Carolina,
Alabama and Mississippi segregated HIV positive prisoners. But
Clinton/Gore took the position of the most backward, AIDSphobic,
bigoted parts of the country. POZ
described Alabama prisons as the WORST for HIV positive inmates which
meant, if that is accurate, that the Alabama system that
Clinton/Gore had intervened on the side of, was even WORSE than
Mississippi's.
All this, of course, put a stop to any thoughts on my part of
voting for the Democratic Party and, with an Al Gore rally coming up
in downtown Minneapolis on October 28, 2000, I began preparing a
leaflet to distribute at the the rally. I called up a person who had
been very active in ACT-UP/Minnesota, who had in fact been described
by one AIDS activist as having been "known as Mr. ACT-UP," to ask for
help in financing the leaflet and confronting Al Gore. He replied
that "I don't think Gore needs to be confronted right now" with the
tight race he was in with Bush. In the course of the conversation, I
finally said, "SO YOU THINK THE PARCHMENT INMATES WILL JUST HAVE TO
SUFFER FROM THOSE CONDITIONS UNTIL GORE GETS ELECTED?" He
replied, "YES."
I did distribute the leaflet at the Gore rally which
concluded, "Regardless of which party you support, surely common
decency should compel everyone to hold the Clinton Administration
accountable." At that time, I had already decided to vote for Ralph
Nader but I concluded without an explicit Nader endorsement to make
the message easier for the Democrats to accept.
But as I said in a later version of the leaflet after someone
helped me print more copies, "The most charitable interpretation
possible of their (the DFL'ers) behavior (at the Gore rally) is that
they were too blinded by their partisan desperation to show any of
the common decency this leaflet called for. The Democratic officials
nationally and in Mississippi who allow the conditions at Parchman
State Prison to continue to exist clearly do not have any decency,
common or otherwise."
I concluded with a paragraph about the futility of voting for the
lesser evil. "The Democrats deserve their present desperation
because they have been pulling this lesser evil scam on us at least
since the Roosevelt Administration of 1932. (Added comment by R.H. --
Actually much longer. Green historian Mark Lause has documented how
supporting the Democrats as the lesser evil has been a death trap for
third parties since 1867.) When you vote for the lesser evil, the
greater evil can become even more evil and the lesser evil has room
to become even more evil also. The trend is steadily to the right
and more evil. It is time to end this disfunctional relationship and
stand up to the Democrats greater evil threat. Vote for something
good instead! VOTE FOR RALPH NADER FOR PRESIDENT!"
Robert Halfhill

---

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Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.5.472 / Virus Database: 269.8.7/830 - Release Date: 6/3/2007 12:47 PM

----- Original Message -----

From: rhalfhill@...

To: uhcan-mn@yahoogroups.com ; MinnesotaProgressiveCaucus@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Monday, June 04, 2007 5:22 AM

Subject: [uhcan-mn] THE FUTILITY OF LESSER EVIL VOTING

I have a vivid example of just how lesser evil voting causes
people to compromise and virtually destroy their ideals. But first,
I must
take up some space to convey just how bad the Democrats were in this
instance and how far this person was willing to go in abandoning
his ideals.
I became aware of this situation when a former resident of a
Minneapolis suburb, who was then an inmate at Parchman State Prison
in
Mississippi, wrote to ACT-UP/Minnesota seeking help. Most of the HIV
positive inmates at Parchman were getting virtually no medical care,
only
a few even receiving AZT and none getting the three drug treatment
and regular viral load monitoring that in 1997 was becoming the
standard of care for HIV/AIDS. The temperatures in Parchman would
typically reach 100 degrees Fahrenheit during the summers, which with
the humidity common in the Gulf states, was equivalent to 115 to 120
degrees. And any medical professional will tell you that high
temperatures can be deadly to anyone who is debilitated for any
reason, whether it be cancer, AIDS or any other debilitating
illness.
HIV positive inmates would die periodically because of the heat. The
prison
plumbing was so bad that when the toilet in one cell was flushed, the
toilet in the adjacent cell would overflow and drip down onto the
bedding of the inmate in the cell below. During the summer inmates
would have to constantly bat flies away from their food in the mess
hall and, given the propensity of flies to fly around and alight at
random, it is a statistical certainty that some of these flies had
been crawling around in the toilet waste before they alighted on the
inmates food.
The two prison "doctors" had what one inmate descibed as "criminal
medical backgrounds," which meant that previous criminal convictions
had made it impossible for the two "doctors" to work in medicine
anywhere but in a prison. Not only were the HIV positive inmates
receiving virtually no medical care for HIV/AIDS, the inmates were
receiving little or no medical care for any other medical condition
as well. One inmate broke his hand while playing ball. A prison
nurse kept telling the "doctor" he needed to look at the inmate's
hand but the "doctor" kept saying there was nothing wrong with his
hand. He was in pain and in danger of losing his hand for eleven
days
before he was finally transferred to the University of Mississippi
Medical Center. Another inmate had injured his back in an automobile
accident and needed a special mattress. The "doctor" told him that
he had "injured his back before coming to prison" and that "it was
his
responsibility to fix it."
Needless to say, these conditions were equivalent to the death
camps of Nazi Germany and the former Yugoslavia for inmates with
HIV/AIDS.
Now to the point. I had voted for a third party in 1996 after
Wellstone had stated that "marriage was for a man and a woman" and
announced his intention to vote for the Defense Of Marriage Act. But
with Bush running against Gore, I was weakening and thinking that
maybe I had better vote for Gore in 2000. It was then that I read in
the November, 1998 POZ magazine that the same ACLU attorney who was
working on the Parchman case, Margaret Winter, was looking forward to
appealing a case about inmates with HIV/AIDS in Alabama prisons to
the Supreme Court when the Clinton/Gore Administration had filed a
brief on Alabama's side, arguing that the consequences of prisoners
contracting AIDS were so grave that prisoners with HIV had to be
segregated from the other inmates. This segregation included HIV
positive inmates not even being allowed to attend chapel services
with other prisoners. Although the Clinton/Gore Administration
argued that this segregation was necessary, only South Carolina,
Alabama and Mississippi segregated HIV positive prisoners. But
Clinton/Gore took the position of the most backward, AIDSphobic,
bigoted parts of the country. POZ
described Alabama prisons as the WORST for HIV positive inmates which
meant, if that is accurate, that the Alabama system that
Clinton/Gore had intervened on the side of, was even WORSE than
Mississippi's.
All this, of course, put a stop to any thoughts on my part of
voting for the Democratic Party and, with an Al Gore rally coming up
in downtown Minneapolis on October 28, 2000, I began preparing a
leaflet to distribute at the the rally. I called up a person who had
been very active in ACT-UP/Minnesota, who had in fact been described
by one AIDS activist as having been "known as Mr. ACT-UP," to ask for
help in financing the leaflet and confronting Al Gore. He replied
that "I don't think Gore needs to be confronted right now" with the
tight race he was in with Bush. In the course of the conversation, I
finally said, "SO YOU THINK THE PARCHMENT INMATES WILL JUST HAVE TO
SUFFER FROM THOSE CONDITIONS UNTIL GORE GETS ELECTED?" He
replied, "YES."
I did distribute the leaflet at the Gore rally which
concluded, "Regardless of which party you support, surely common
decency should compel everyone to hold the Clinton Administration
accountable." At that time, I had already decided to vote for Ralph
Nader but I concluded without an explicit Nader endorsement to make
the message easier for the Democrats to accept.
But as I said in a later version of the leaflet after someone
helped me print more copies, "The most charitable interpretation
possible of their (the DFL'ers) behavior (at the Gore rally) is that
they were too blinded by their partisan desperation to show any of
the common decency this leaflet called for. The Democratic officials
nationally and in Mississippi who allow the conditions at Parchman
State Prison to continue to exist clearly do not have any decency,
common or otherwise."
I concluded with a paragraph about the futility of voting for the
lesser evil. "The Democrats deserve their present desperation
because they have been pulling this lesser evil scam on us at least
since the Roosevelt Administration of 1932. (Added comment by R.H. --
Actually much longer. Green historian Mark Lause has documented how
supporting the Democrats as the lesser evil has been a death trap for
third parties since 1867.) When you vote for the lesser evil, the
greater evil can become even more evil and the lesser evil has room
to become even more evil also. The trend is steadily to the right
and more evil. It is time to end this disfunctional relationship and
stand up to the Democrats greater evil threat. Vote for something
good instead! VOTE FOR RALPH NADER FOR PRESIDENT!"
Robert Halfhill

I have a vivid example of just how lesser evil voting causes
people to compromise and virtually destroy their ideals.  But first,
I must
take up some space to convey just how bad the Democrats were in this
instance and how far this person was willing to go in abandoning
his ideals.
    I became aware of this situation when a former resident of a
Minneapolis suburb, who was then an inmate at Parchman State Prison
in
Mississippi, wrote to ACT-UP/Minnesota seeking help.  Most of the HIV
positive inmates at Parchman were getting virtually no medical care,
only
a few even receiving AZT and none getting the three drug treatment
and regular viral load monitoring that in 1997 was becoming the
standard of care for HIV/AIDS.  The temperatures in Parchman would
typically reach 100 degrees Fahrenheit during the summers, which with
the humidity common in the Gulf states, was equivalent to 115 to 120
degrees.  And any medical professional will tell you that high
temperatures can be deadly to anyone who is debilitated for any
reason, whether it be cancer, AIDS or any other debilitating
illness.
HIV positive inmates would die periodically because of the heat.  The
prison
plumbing was so bad that when the toilet in one cell was flushed, the
toilet in the adjacent cell would overflow and drip down onto the
bedding of the inmate in the cell below.  During the summer inmates
would have to constantly bat flies away from their food in the mess
hall and, given the propensity of flies to fly around and alight at
random, it is a statistical certainty that some of these flies had
been crawling around in the toilet waste before they alighted on the
inmates food.
    The two prison "doctors" had what one inmate descibed as "criminal
medical backgrounds," which meant that previous criminal convictions
had made it impossible for the two "doctors" to work in medicine
anywhere but in a prison.  Not only were the HIV positive inmates
receiving virtually no medical care for HIV/AIDS, the inmates were
receiving little or no medical care for any other medical condition
as well.  One inmate broke his hand while playing ball.  A prison
nurse kept telling the "doctor" he needed to look at the inmate's
hand but the "doctor" kept saying there was nothing wrong with his
hand.  He was in pain and in danger of losing his hand for eleven
days
before he was finally transferred to the University of Mississippi
Medical Center.  Another inmate had injured his back in an automobile
accident and needed a special mattress.  The "doctor" told him that
he had "injured his back before coming to prison" and that "it was
his
responsibility to fix it."
    Needless to say, these conditions were equivalent to the death
camps of Nazi Germany and the former Yugoslavia for inmates with
HIV/AIDS.
    Now to the point.  I had voted for a third party in 1996 after
Wellstone had stated that "marriage was for a man and a woman" and
announced his intention to vote for the Defense Of Marriage Act.  But
with Bush running against Gore, I was weakening and thinking that
maybe I had better vote for Gore in 2000.  It was then that I read in
the November, 1998 POZ magazine that the same ACLU attorney who was
working on the Parchman case, Margaret Winter, was looking forward to
appealing a case about inmates with HIV/AIDS in Alabama prisons to
the Supreme Court when the Clinton/Gore Administration had filed a
brief on Alabama's side, arguing that the consequences of prisoners
contracting AIDS were so grave that prisoners with HIV had to be
segregated from the other inmates.  This segregation included HIV
positive inmates not even being allowed to attend chapel services
with other prisoners.  Although the Clinton/Gore Administration
argued that this segregation was necessary, only South Carolina,
Alabama and Mississippi segregated HIV positive prisoners.  But
Clinton/Gore took the position of the most backward, AIDSphobic,
bigoted parts of the country.  POZ
described Alabama prisons as the WORST for HIV positive inmates which
meant, if that is accurate, that the Alabama system that
Clinton/Gore had intervened on the side of, was even WORSE than
Mississippi's.
    All this, of course, put a stop to any thoughts on my part of
voting for the Democratic Party and, with an Al Gore rally coming up
in downtown Minneapolis on October 28, 2000, I began preparing a
leaflet to distribute at the the rally.  I called up a person who had
been very active in ACT-UP/Minnesota, who had in fact been described
by one AIDS activist as having been "known as Mr. ACT-UP," to ask for
help in financing the leaflet and confronting Al Gore.  He replied
that "I don't think Gore needs to be confronted right now" with the
tight race he was in with Bush.  In the course of the conversation, I
finally said, "SO YOU THINK THE PARCHMENT INMATES WILL JUST HAVE TO
SUFFER FROM THOSE CONDITIONS UNTIL GORE GETS ELECTED?"  He
replied, "YES."
    I did distribute the leaflet at the Gore rally which
concluded, "Regardless of which party you support, surely common
decency should compel everyone to hold the Clinton Administration
accountable."  At that time, I had already decided to vote for Ralph
Nader but I concluded without an explicit Nader endorsement to make
the message easier for the Democrats to accept.
    But as I said in a later version of the leaflet after someone
helped me print more copies, "The most charitable interpretation
possible of their (the DFL'ers) behavior (at the Gore rally) is that
they were too blinded by their partisan desperation to show any of
the common decency this leaflet called for.  The Democratic officials
nationally and in Mississippi who allow the conditions at Parchman
State Prison to continue to exist clearly do not have any decency,
common or otherwise."
    I concluded with a paragraph about the futility of voting for the
lesser evil.  "The Democrats deserve their present desperation
because they have been pulling this lesser evil scam on us at least
since the Roosevelt Administration of 1932.  (Added comment by R.H. --
Actually much longer.  Green historian Mark Lause has documented how
supporting the Democrats as the lesser evil has been a death trap for
third parties since 1867.)  When you vote for the lesser evil, the
greater evil can become even more evil and the lesser evil has room
to become even more evil also.  The trend is steadily to the right
and more evil.  It is time to end this disfunctional relationship and
stand up to the Democrats greater evil threat.  Vote for something
good instead!  VOTE FOR RALPH NADER FOR PRESIDENT!"
Robert Halfhill

Although largely modified by Disney for the film, the
cricket character actually appears in the book. The
book cricket got far less page time, only appearing in
chapters 4, 13, 16 and 36. Furthermore, the book
cricket is crushed to death by a mallet, though this
happens in the first chapter and he thereafter appears
once as a ghost and thenceforth as a living cricket,
none the worse for being killed with a hammer.

Collodi originally had not intended the novel as
children's literature; the ending was unhappy and
allegorically dealt with serious themes. In the
original, serialized version, Pinocchio dies a
gruesome death — hanged for his innumerable faults
including killing the crickett, at the end of Chapter
15.
             Steve Linnerooth

--- Demi Miller <peersupport@...> wrote:
  But we are not there yet and we need a lot more of
these activist "Jiminy Crickets" (the voice of
conscience who ultimately was able to keep the puppet
Pinnochio honest in the face of temptation)- to step
forward and develop close connections with various
elected officials.





Steve Linnerooth



________________________________________________________________________________\
____
Be a PS3 game guru.
Get your game face on with the latest PS3 news and previews at Yahoo! Games.
http://videogames.yahoo.com/platform?platform=120121

Below is the WHO assessment criteria of the World's health care systems.  I read parts of the report and the listing when it came out in 2000, but I thought it was updated.  I can find no update that lists the countries in order of best to last according to WHO's criteria, which I have given below.  It seems rather odd that we are still referring to statistics that are seven years old.  A lot has changed in many of the countries. 2000 stats seem a little archaic.

I am willing to bet that the US has gone down from its already low ranking for a first world country --ranked 137 in 2000. .  And, I am willing to bet that other counties would rate either higher or lower if a new study were done.  I know that Cuba, for example, was still in what is called the "special period" in 2000 (starting in early 1990s after fall of SU when Cuba lost 85% of its trade over night.)  And, I image the data was gathered at least a year earlier.  Cuba has made huge advancements in the last seven years.   I am quite sure that Venezuela would have risen in the last seven years.  And, it seems, that perhaps Vietnam would be higher. 

I also imagine that Iraq has gone down even further.  Iraq had an excellent universal single-payer health care plan until we bombed it in 1991.  It was just starting to make advancement, though nowhere close to pre-1991, when we bombed the poor country again.  Essentially, Iraq has no health-care system at this time due to the immorality of the US corporate terrorist government.

I would also be interested seeing where Canada and the UK stand now, as their health-care systems have somewhat deteriorated--at least that is what I gathered from some articles I read about them.

Does anyone know if WHO has done a study since 2000, or if they plan to do one?  I searched the web but could not come up with any updates????????????????????????????

Below the WHO criteria is the listing that I rec'd from another e-mail source which gives the WHO link that I used to get the criteria. 

Socialism or Nothing!
Joan
============================

The World Health Organization has carried out the first ever analysis of the world’s health systems. Using five performance indicators to measure health systems in 191 member states, it finds that France provides the best overall health care followed among major countries by Italy, Spain, Oman, Austria and Japan.

The findings are published today, 21 June, in The World Health Report 2000 – Health systems: Improving performance.

The U. S. health system spends a higher portion of its gross domestic product than any other country but ranks 37 out of 191 countries according to its performance, the report finds. The United Kingdom, which spends just six percent of gross domestic product (GDP) on health services, ranks 18th . Several small countries – San Marino, Andorra, Malta and Singapore are rated close behind second- placed Italy.

WHO Director-General Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland says: "The main message from this report is that the health and well-being of people around the world depend critically on the performance of the health systems that serve them. Yet there is wide variation in performance, even among countries with similar levels of income and health expenditure. It is essential for decision- makers to understand the underlying reasons so that system performance, and hence the health of populations, can be improved."

Dr Christopher Murray, Director of WHO’s Global Programme on Evidence for Health Policy. says: "Although significant progress has been achieved in past decades, virtually all countries are underutilizing the resources that are available to them. This leads to large numbers of preventable deaths and disabilities; unnecessary suffering, injustice, inequality and denial of an individual’s basic rights to health."

The impact of failures in health systems is most severe on the poor everywhere, who are driven deeper into poverty by lack of financial protection against ill- health, the report says.

"The poor are treated with less respect, given less choice of service providers and offered lower- quality amenities," says Dr Brundtland. "In trying to buy health from their own pockets, they pay and become poorer."

The World Health Report says the main failings of many health systems are:

• Many health ministries focus on the public sector and often disregard the frequently much larger private sector health care.

• In many countries, some if not most physicians work simultaneously for the public sector and in private practice. This means the public sector ends up subsidizing unofficial private practice.

• Many governments fail to prevent a "black market" in health, where widespread corruption, bribery, "moonlighting" and other illegal practices flourish. The black markets, which themselves are caused by malfunctioning health systems, and low income of health workers, further undermine those systems.

• Many health ministries fail to enforce regulations that they themselves have created or are supposed to implement in the public interest.

Dr Julio Frenk, Executive Director for Evidence and Information for Policy at WHO, says: "By providing a comparative guide to what works and what doesn’t work, we can help countries to learn from each other and thereby improve the performance of their health systems."

Dr Philip Musgrove, editor-in-chief of the report, says: "The WHO study finds that it isn’t just how much you invest in total, or where you put facilities geographically, that matters. It’s the balance among inputs that counts – for example, you have to have the right number of nurses per doctor."

Most of the lowest placed countries are in sub-Saharan Africa where life expectancies are low. HIV and AIDS are major causes of ill-health. Because of the AIDS epidemic, healthy life expectancy for babies born in 2000 in many of these nations has dropped to 40 years or less.

One key recommendation from the report is for countries to extend health insurance to as large a percentage of the population as possible. WHO says that it is better to make "pre-payments" on health care as much as possible, whether in the form of insurance, taxes or social security.

While private health expenses in industrial countries now average only some 25 percent because of universal health coverage (except in the United States, where it is 56%), in India, families typically pay 80 percent of their health care costs as "out-of- pocket" expenses when they receive health care.

"It is especially beneficial to make sure that as large a percentage as possible of the poorest people in each country can get insurance," says Dr Frenk. "Insurance protects people against the catastrophic effects of poor health. What we are seeing is that in many countries, the poor pay a higher percentage of their income on health care than the rich."

"In many countries without a health insurance safety net, many families have to pay more than 100 percent of their income for health care when hit with sudden emergencies. In other words, illness forces them into debt."

In designing the framework for health system performance, WHO broke new methodological ground, employing a technique not previously used for health systems. It compares each country’s system to what the experts estimate to be the upper limit of what can be done with the level of resources available in that country. It also measures what each country’s system has accomplished in comparison with those of other countries.

WHO’s assessment system was based on five indicators: overall level of population health; health inequalities (or disparities) within the population; overall level of health system responsiveness (a combination of patient satisfaction and how well the system acts); distribution of responsiveness within the population (how well people of varying economic status find that they are served by the health system); and the distribution of the health system’s financial burden within the population (who pays the costs).

"We have created a new tool to help us measure performance," says Dr Murray. "As we develop it further and strengthen the raw data used for these measures in the years to come, we believe this will be an increasingly useful tool for governments in improving their own health systems."

Other findings in the annual WHO report include:

• In Europe, health systems in Mediterranean countries such as France, Italy and Spain are rated higher than others in the continent. Norway is the highest Scandinavian nation, at 11th .

• Colombia, Chile, Costa Rica and Cuba are rated highest among the Latin American nations – 22nd, 33rd, 36th and 39th in the world, respectively.

• Singapore is ranked 6th , the only Asian country apart from Japan in the top 50 countries.

• In the Pacific, Australia ranks 32nd overall, while New Zealand is 41st.

• In the Middle East and North Africa, many countries rank highly: Oman is in 8th place overall, Saudi Arabia is ranked 26th , United Arab Emirates 27th and Morocco, 29th.

In 1970, Oman’s health care system was not performing well. The child mortality rate was high. But major government investments have proved to be successful in improving system performance. "Oman’s success shows that tremendous strides can be accomplished in a relatively short period of time," says Dr Murray.

Information in the WHO report also rates countries according to the different components of the performance index.

Responsiveness: The nations with the most responsive health systems are the United States, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Denmark, Germany, Japan, Canada, Norway, Netherlands and Sweden. The reason these are all advanced industrial nations is that a number of the elements of responsiveness depend strongly on the availability of resources. In addition, many of these countries were the first to begin addressing the responsiveness of their health systems to people’s needs.

Fairness of financial contribution: When WHO measured the fairness of financial contribution to health systems, countries lined up differently. The measurement is based on the fraction of a household’s capacity to spend (income minus food expenditure) that goes on health care (including tax payments, social insurance, private insurance and out of pocket payments). Colombia was the top-rated country in this category, followed by Luxembourg, Belgium, Djibouti, Denmark, Ireland, Germany, Norway, Japan and Finland.

Colombia achieved top rank because someone with a low income might pay the equivalent of one dollar per year for health care, while a high- income individual pays 7.6 dollars.

Countries judged to have the least fair financing of health systems include Sierra Leone, Myanmar, Brazil, China, Viet Nam, Nepal, Russian Federation, Peru and Cambodia.

Brazil, a middle-income nation, ranks low in this table because its people make high out-of-pocket payments for health care. This means a substantial number of households pay a large fraction of their income (after paying for food) on health care. The same explanation applies to the fairness of financing Peru’s health system. The reason why the Russian Federation ranks low is most likely related to the impact of the economic crisis in the 1990s. This has severely reduced government spending on health and led to increased out-of-pocket payment.

In North America, Canada rates as the country with the fairest mechanism for health system finance – ranked at 17-19, while the United States is at 54-55. Cuba is the highest among Latin American and Caribbean nations at 23-25.

The report indicates – clearly – the attributes of a good health system in relation to the elements of the performance measure, given below.

Overall Level of Health: A good health system, above all, contributes to good health. To assess overall population health and thus to judge how well the objective of good health is being achieved, WHO has chosen to use the measure of disability- adjusted life expectancy (DALE). This has the advantage of being directly comparable to life expectancy and is readily compared across populations. The report provides estimates for all countries of disability- adjusted life expectancy. DALE is estimated to equal or exceed 70 years in 24 countries, and 60 years in over half the Member States of WHO. At the other extreme are 32 countries where disability- adjusted life expectancy is estimated to be less than 40 years. Many of these are countries characterised by major epidemics of HIV/AIDS, among other causes.

Distribution of Health in the Populations: It is not sufficient to protect or improve the average health of the population, if - at the same time - inequality worsens or remains high because the gain accrues disproportionately to those already enjoying better health. The health system also has the responsibility to try to reduce inequalities by prioritizing actions to improve the health of the worse-off, wherever these inequalities are caused by conditions amenable to intervention. The objective of good health is really twofold: the best attainable average level – goodness – and the smallest feasible differences among individuals and groups – fairness. A gain in either one of these, with no change in the other, constitutes an improvement.

Responsiveness: Responsiveness includes two major components. These are (a) respect for persons (including dignity, confidentiality and autonomy of individuals and families to decide about their own health); and (b) client orientation (including prompt attention, access to social support networks during care, quality of basic amenities and choice of provider).

Distribution of Financing: There are good and bad ways to raise the resources for a health system, but they are more or less good primarily as they affect how fairly the financial burden is shared. Fair financing, as the name suggests, is only concerned with distribution. It is not related to the total resource bill, nor to how the funds are used. The objectives of the health system do not include any particular level of total spending, either absolutely or relative to income. This is because, at all levels of spending there are other possible uses for the resources devoted to health. The level of funding to allocate to the health system is a social choice – with no correct answer. Nonetheless, the report suggests that countries spending less than around 60 dollars per person per year on health find that their populations are unable to access health services from an adequately performing health system.

In order to reflect these attributes, health systems have to carry out certain functions. They build human resources through investment and training, they deliver services, they finance all these activities. They act as the overall stewards of the resources and powers entrusted to them. In focusing on these few universal functions of health systems, the report provides evidence to assist policy-makers as they make choices to improve health system performance.

The World Health Report 2000 (1) consists of a message from the WHO’s Director-General, an overview, six chapters and statistical annexes. The chapter headings are "Why do health systems matter?", "How well do health systems perform?", Health services: well chosen, well organized?", "What resources are needed?", "Who pays for health systems?", and "How is the public interest protected?"

(1) The World Health Report 2000 – Health systems: Improving performance.
Published by the World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland
Price: 15 Swiss francs (10.50 Swiss francs in developing countries)
ISBN 92 4 156198 X

The full report is available on www.who.int/whr

It can be purchased through bookorders@...
==========================================================
Source: WHO World Health Report
http://www.photius.com/rankings/who_world_health_ranks.html - See also
http://www.photius.com/rankings/world_health_systems.html Spreadsheet
Details (731kb)

View this list in alphabetic order
http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks_alpha.html


1 France
2 Italy
3 San Marino
4 Andorra
5 Malta
6 Singapore
7 Spain
8 Oman
9 Austria
10 Japan
11 Norway
12 Portugal
13 Monaco
14 Greece
15 Iceland
16 Luxembourg
17 Netherlands
18 United Kingdom
19 Ireland
20 Switzerland
21 Belgium
22 Colombia
23 Sweden
24 Cyprus
25 Germany
26 Saudi Arabia
27 United Arab Emirates
28 Israel
29 Morocco
30 Canada
31 Finland
32 Australia
33 Chile
34 Denmark
35 Dominica
36 Costa Rica
37 United States of America
38 Slovenia
39 Cuba
40 Brunei
41 New Zealand
42 Bahrain
43 Croatia
44 Qatar
45 Kuwait
46 Barbados
47 Thailand
48 Czech Republic
49 Malaysia
50 Poland
51 Dominican Republic
52 Tunisia
53 Jamaica
54 Venezuela
55 Albania
56 Seychelles
57 Paraguay
58 South Korea
59 Senegal
60 Philippines
61 Mexico
62 Slovakia
63 Egypt
64 Kazakhstan
65 Uruguay
66 Hungary
67 Trinidad and Tobago
68 Saint Lucia
69 Belize
70 Turkey
71 Nicaragua
72 Belarus
73 Lithuania
74 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
75 Argentina
76 Sri Lanka
77 Estonia
78 Guatemala
79 Ukraine
80 Solomon Islands
81 Algeria
82 Palau
83 Jordan
84 Mauritius
85 Grenada
86 Antigua and Barbuda
87 Libya
88 Bangladesh
89 Macedonia
90 Bosnia-Herzegovina
91 Lebanon
92 Indonesia
93 Iran
94 Bahamas
95 Panama
96 Fiji
97 Benin
98 Nauru
99 Romania
100 Saint Kitts and Nevis
101 Moldova
102 Bulgaria
103 Iraq
104 Armenia
105 Latvia
106 Yugoslavia
107 Cook Islands
108 Syria
109 Azerbaijan
110 Suriname
111 Ecuador
112 India
113 Cape Verde
114 Georgia
115 El Salvador
116 Tonga
117 Uzbekistan
118 Comoros
119 Samoa
120 Yemen
121 Niue
122 Pakistan
123 Micronesia
124 Bhutan
125 Brazil
126 Bolivia
127 Vanuatu
128 Guyana
129 Peru
130 Russia
131 Honduras
132 Burkina Faso
133 Sao Tome and Principe
134 Sudan
135 Ghana
136 Tuvalu
137 Ivory Coast
138 Haiti
139 Gabon
140 Kenya
141 Marshall Islands
142 Kiribati
143 Burundi
144 China
145 Mongolia
146 Gambia
147 Maldives
148 Papua New Guinea
149 Uganda
150 Nepal
151 Kyrgystan
152 Togo
153 Turkmenistan
154 Tajikistan
155 Zimbabwe
156 Tanzania
157 Djibouti
158 Eritrea
159 Madagascar
160 Vietnam
161 Guinea
162 Mauritania
163 Mali
164 Cameroon
165 Laos
166 Congo
167 North Korea
168 Namibia
169 Botswana
170 Niger
171 Equatorial Guinea
172 Rwanda
173 Afghanistan
174 Cambodia
175 South Africa
176 Guinea-Bissau
177 Swaziland
178 Chad
179 Somalia
180 Ethiopia
181 Angola
182 Zambia
183 Lesotho
184 Mozambique
185 Malawi
186 Liberia
187 Nigeria
188 Democratic Republic of the Congo
189 Central African Republic
190 Myanmar

Recommended Resources

http://www.kpfk.org/

http://www.commondreams.org/

Bravo... very well done... the KFAI producer did a good job of editing
this piece too.  E




On Sat, June 2, 2007 11:07 am, John Schwarz wrote:
Here's the audio file of the story KFAI broadcast last night about the
UHCAN demo at United Health Group. It consists of parts of interviews they
conducted with those at the demo on Tuesday.

http://www.kfai.org/node/2729

When you get to that page, you have to click on "STREAM" to listen. You
can also download it by right-clicking.

Thanks.

John Schwarz

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Unity, not division. www.unitedhealthsystem.org

A united health system. Your life depends on it.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

----- Original Message -----

From: beaches5151@...

To: uhcan-mn@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Friday, June 01, 2007 8:31 PM

Subject: Re: [uhcan-mn] Media Coverage, UHG demo

please remove me from the mailing list  thanks..beaches5151@aol.com


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