Reinvent Illinois

Health Care

Posted on 13. Nov, 2009 by Erin in Reform Ideas

ILLINOIS SINGLE PAYER – REPUBLICAN STYLE!

I am posting the cover letter and healthcare reform I sent to Tom Cross at his request. It is long – but it’s a heck of a lot shorter than the thousand pages of nonsense Congress is trying to shove down our throats.

Dear Representative Tom Cross,

I received your letter requesting that I send a copy of my healthcare proposal to your staff. Linda Chapa LaVia sent me a similar request, and Kay Hatcher mentioned that she would like to discuss it in more detail as well. They will be copied on this letter so I can kill three birds with one stone.

Please read the following transcripts from Bill Moyer’s Journal:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07312009/profile.html
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05222009/transcript1.html
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/08142009/profile.html

He was one of my main sources for my proposed plan. I don’t agree with any of his guests’ proposals, or his. I just listened to all sides and came up with my own. You will see doctors and nurses being arrested because they advocated for single payer. You will see that the spokesperson from the Conservatives for Patients Rights was fired for Medicare and Medicaid fraud. You will see David Frum from the New Majority as well. “What if we defeat healthcare reform? What then? Conservatives should be careful what they wish for…” Bravo, Mr. Frum.

I would be more than willing to speak on the house floor in Springfield and pass around my medical bills to help you sell this proposal. I didn’t find out until I was five months pregnant that I was having twins. I was on bed rest for three months, I had gestational diabetes – and now I have onset diabetes. The week after I got home from the hospital after giving birth, I hemorrhaged, was rushed to the ER, admitted and given a blood transfusion. One twin has horrid allergies and needed to go to the ER for a breathing treatment. My other son was playing catch with my husband, got hit in the eye and the CT at the ER found a brain tumor. The Saturday before his Tuesday surgery, I went to the ER in the middle of the night with heart attack like pains and was told I needed my gall bladder removed ASAP. Three days after I brought my son home from the hospital from his brain surgery, my four year old was hospitalized for Roto Virus. My family has excellent insurance, and you should see the bills that I have because of that fact. Bills that I have to pay ten percent of.

All that I ask is that I don’t end up some Joe the Plumber. I don’t want any attention or credit, and I definitely don’t want the media harassing me. This is not about me – this is about my country. My children. I don’t care who gets the credit – just get it done. I am praying every day that Congress votes down ANY healthcare reform – so that it bides us time and gives Illinois the perfect excuse and open door to reform it here. There are Americans who are getting divorced because insurance companies are denying them on pre-existing or dropping them because they are sick. Companies TELLING them to divorce or quit their jobs and go on Medicaid instead. Why aren’t the Town Hallers screaming about having to pick up the tab for that? Because “corporate externality” is not in the “Newspeak” dictionary. Their behavior is both Saul Alinsky and Orwellian – War is Peace, Ignorance is Strength – it’s absolutely frightening. Thank you. I am praying that y ou are willed to help end this nightmare called healthcare “reform.”
THE PLAN

That horridly long and complicated screed Congress is calling healthcare reform is a joke. It is just another Wall Street bailout that will further indebt Americans whether it has a public option or not. Countries with the most effective universal healthcare plans administer it privately – and locally. Their populations are also smaller than Illinois. This country is simply too big to micromanage healthcare at the federal level.

States need to take the reigns, and Illinois needs to take the lead. Congressional Democrats cannot even stand up to Congressional Republicans when they have the majority, they won’t stand up to the healthcare lobby lining their pockets with our premiums. And any American who thinks that the Republicans aren’t running a dog and pony show of their own are really kidding themselves. Both parties are playing the American people to either keep or gain seats in the midterm elections. THE END. And any Illinois politician who sits by and does nothing is an accessory to the crime.

There certainly is a special seat in hell for the healthcare industrial complex, but the hottest seats are reserved for the politicians enabling that said complex. Corporations are in business to maximize their shareholders’ profits. In fact, it’s the law – and they are just doing their jobs. Laws passed by lawmakers. Those lawmakers can haul them all into Congressional hearings one by one. Doing so to cover up for the fact that those lawmakers are the ones not living up to the oaths they took to serve their constituents. I cannot wait until the day they call in the wrong CEO – one that calls them out instead.

Blue Cross superbly insures seventy five percent of Illinois. Illinois should take the wheeling and dealing right to the horse’s mouth. Would Blue Cross be interested in a state contract insuring 12.9 million Illinois residents and 550,000 illegal immigrants for $100 per person per month? That’s over $1.3 billion a month, and $1 million collects $112 in interest – per day. If Blue Cross doesn’t want it, open the bidding to another company. WellPoint is right next door in Indiana, and Evan Bayh’s wife is on their board. No citizen would be forced to join. It’s a free country; ignorant Tea Baggers and Town Hallers can continue paying current prices, but their employers will no longer be picking up the tab for their employee’s personal ideology. The state contracted provider could even opt to start a not for profit subsidiary for all government employees, Medicaid/Medicare patients and Veterans – not for profits don’t pay taxes. But if they opt for that, they need to have offices in Illinois that employ Illinois residents.

Employers will only be required to deduct the premiums from gross pay, but any portion of the premiums they pay can be written off, still used as a hiring incentive, and they’d get a small subsidy for paying the premiums in full. Those employing illegal immigrants are subject to the same rules. Every illegal immigrant already enrolled in or applying for Medicaid will be investigated and attached to a breadwinner. That breadwinner’s employer will be heavily fined and have illegal employee and dependant premiums directly garnished by the contracted provider. Medicaid recipients will be mandated to attend a seminar and receive training on how to use their healthcare more effectively. If they don’t, they will lose their aid. Residents who are on unemployment can apply for Medicaid if needed, or have the premiums deducted from their unemployment checks.

Residents pay a $20 co-pay for office visits, $10 for a sporadic prescription and $4 for permanent ones (Wal-Mart already offers this.) Medicaid patients pay no co-pays. There will be no pre-existing and they cannot drop patients. Patients can go to any healthcare provider they choose. This includes basic Veteran care; military service related injuries will continue to be picked up and provided under current Veteran programs.

The real problem with America’s healthcare system is cost. The only way to control costs is to set a budget that forces the healthcare industry to work within that budget. Blue Cross already has an excellent existing system that negotiates with healthcare providers. For example; a neurosurgeon billed Blue Cross over $24,000 for a surgery, but under the contracted amount that doctor had with Blue Cross, Blue Cross paid just over $4100.00 for the procedure. Under the new contract, any fraud, waste or payment disagreements will be between the insurance provider and the healthcare provider, not the naïve patient. This will nip the racket they have going together right in the butt. It will also curb the need for regulations. This is not government regulation, this is a contract. If you don’t take it, someone else will. That is real free markets. We are their customers, and it’s high time they started treating us like we are, and it‘s even higher time that our govern ment stopped being their customer service reps. They are OUR customer service reps.

Employers will deduct the premiums and direct deposit them once a month into a designated Illinois bank account. The state will do the same with Medicaid, Medicare and Veteran payments. The provider will get 90 days to pay out claims, so they can collect interest on the $1.3 billion for 90 days. If they are slow to pay, or they are denying claims, the healthcare provider files a grievance with the state and the contract runs the risk of being reneged.

Businesses will flock to Illinois. It will open up a whole new market for covering elective surgery, catastrophic illness coverage for non-medical expenses, nursing home coverage, elderly in home care and more comprehensive dental insurance, just to name a few.

We need two things from the federal government. One: pass “affordable medical malpractice insurance for all.” Doctors don’t need tort reform, they need malpractice insurers who are price gouging them by charging for “projected losses” rather and actual losses to stop doing that. Malpractice insurance providers have also been caught red handed lying about their “losses” too. If Republicans don’t like lawyers giving money to Democrats, then stop claiming campaign finance reform violates free speech.

Secondly; do not block Illinois from reforming our own healthcare. Can we? “Yes We Can.” That’s our Senator in the White House, our Congressman who is his Chief of Staff. Our Senator is the Senate Majority Whip. Our former Congressman was also the Speaker of the House. We sent them to Washington to lead, and if they cannot do it, the least they can do is give us an opportunity to lead our own state and seal our own fate. Oligarchy and fascism doesn’t work for Illinois; sorry.

Getting this done is easier than you think. Enlist the labor unions, and Chicago is in. Enlist the Republicans, and downstate is in. Don’t you see what this plan is? It is basically a single payer plan that has every Republican goody in the bag: states rights, free market competition, a balanced state budget, enormous tax payer savings – and it privatizes Medicare and Medicaid payments – without getting rid of the programs. This healthcare plan will pull Illinois out of debt, put us back on the map and insure every resident, legal or not. It will not only keeping the private insurance companies in business – but it will expand their business. They get all the Medicare and Medicaid patients, and reduced costs make it possible for customers to buy more insurance.

And the best part? Because Illinois is saving the federal government so much money, they should be picking up the whole tab for Medicare and Medicaid – and the subsidies to employers. Any state who complains will be called out for what they are getting from the feds.

With Obama in the White House, Chicago Democrats have taken a lot of mud slinging. I cannot speak for the politicians, but as a Chicago Democrat, I can speak for me. We are Sean Connery in the “Untouchables.” We will walk the beat before we sell out, but we will also cut corners to aggressively go after the ones who would, and have, sold out for their own gain – party irrelevant.

The Democrats in Washington are currently pretending to play Kevin Costner – especially Obama. He was an Ivy League graduate with a name for himself and his sky was the limit. Where did he come to learn the ropes? He came to Chicago. If he was a junior Senator from Hawaii – he’d still be a junior Senator from Hawaii. Chicago, just like Connery in the movie, sat Obama down in our church and cut him off when he tried this whole “we’ll get them the noble way” mantra.

Remember Connery cutting Costner off, telling him “cut all that bullshit – what are you prepared to do? They bring a knife – you bring a gun; they put one yours in the hospital – you put one of theirs in the effen morgue. THAT’S the CHICAGO way.”

Illinois politicians, What are you prepared to do? If you don’t have the political will and guts to take on the federal government – that I might add are only there because Illinois residents voted for them – and you – and the healthcare lobby – then please don’t run for office. You do not work for the healthcare lobby or D.C.- you work for Illinois residents. You are public servants, and because so many politicians got away from that, because they took money from fascist corporations that have in turned extorted them, my life savings that I put down on my home is gone – the mortgage melt down stole it. My husbands pension is gone- Wall Street investors stole it. My family union business will go out of business because our competitors took all the money they saved paying their employees peanuts, and used it to lobby politicians into government subsidizing the healthcare, housing, food and educations of their employees and their dependants.

My father in law chooses to pay union scale pay and benefits. He has not asked the government for a dime, but because after he does all of the above, there is no money left to pay off the politicians, so he gets punished for that by losing business. He gets called a Communist, a Socialist, unpatriotic -un-American? He is none of those things, but even if he was – it’s a hell of a lot better than being a fascist.

I don’t mean to be so forward or insulting, but if you don’t act now, and Congress passes a bill – any bill – the states will forfeit all our rights to regulate and man our own health. I don’t want any of those people – Democrat or Republican – voting on anything pertaining to my or my family’s healthcare. I want my state reps and the labor unions in the drivers’ seat for my family. If you want me to beg, I will. All those letters I have written to papers – warning what will happen to us on any particular issue – everything I said has come true. Please don’t let it go too far before I have to say “I told you so” about this too.