Seachange Bulletin #117August 19, 2003Seachange Bulletin ArchivesEmail the editorSeachange Bulletin #117: Health Crisis & Bush’s Blackout: Solutions Exist lm> Today we begin a four-part series about the growing number of local people who do not have health care insurance, a benefit so important that many job-seekers now make that, rather than pay, the deciding factor when seeking employment. We have entered the health care age, and the rising cost of insurance threatens both businesses and health care providers. The signs of this new era are everywhere through an array of treatments and medications that is staggering. When you watched television a few years ago, how often did you see a commercial for drugs? Rarely. Today, we are inundated with advertisements promoting new miracle drugs that make parts of our bodies work better. This has resulted in a significant increase in retail spending on prescription drugs, the fastest-growing item in the US health care budget. One study showed that 25 of the most heavily advertised drugs accounted for more than 40 percent of the increase in retail drug spending in one year. ... Uninsured and vulnerable Broken system leaves many on the margins of health care Marcia Blomberg, Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican, June 29, 2003 <http://www.masslive.com/search/index.ssf?/base/news-0/105687195947410.xml?nna e> Robin C. Veratti, a diabetic for almost 21 of her 22 years, recently suffered a dangerous hypoglycemic episode because she couldn't afford to test her blood sugar as often as she needs to. The full-time college student and waitress has limited insurance, but it doesn't cover the $61 cost of 100 test strips she needs to check her blood sugar five times a day. Waiting to see a doctor at a free health-care clinic in East Longmeadow, the Ludlow woman had little patience for arguments over the nation's fractured health-care system. "There are 4 million Americans with diabetes," she said. "You mean to tell me you can't give help? Every industrialized country except America has free health care." ... Safety net struggles to catch the poor Patricia Norris, Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican, June 30, 2003 <http://www.masslive.com/search/index.ssf?/base/news-0/1056958356154162.xml?nn ae> The calendar is turned to May. But Carole M. Goulet fixates on July. The 62-year-old unemployed, uninsured Northampton woman hopes she can afford a visit to her pulmonologist. Although Goulet, who suffers from a chronic lung disease, qualified for a program that offsets doctor fees, the bills remain costly despite discounts, she said. Down Route 5 and into West Springfield, fresh-faced Jennifer Parker pulls double shifts at Chi Chi's Mexican restaurant and works six, sometimes seven days a week to make ends meet. Still, the 19-year-old's dogged determination doesn't earn her health insurance. Parker thought she'd qualify for MassHealth, the state's insurance program for the poor. But a government case worker told her since she wasn't a parent, pregnant or infected with HIV, her application was denied. ... Can a cure be found? Stan Freeman, Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican, July 3, 2003 <http://www.masslive.com/search/index.ssf?/base/news-0/1057234592113155.xml?nn ae> As more join the ranks of the uninsured, calls for alternatives to America's health-care system are gaining urgency. Is universal health care the answer? The saying is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." Every decade or so, the US health-care system seems to teeter on the brink of collapse, but it has never quite come to ruin. As a result, there has not been a sustained national will to reform it. In recent years, though, health-insurance costs have risen without relief, and an estimated 41 million Americans under age 65 are currently without insurance, including nearly 365,000 in Massachusetts. In the eyes of many, what was once the most admired health-care system in the world is finally in collapse, and the will to reform it is building rapidly. And while hospitals, physicians, insurers, politicians and patient advocates will all be pushing their particular agendas - which are often at odds - all agree something needs to be done. Long a champion of health-care reform, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., calls the plight of the uninsured "a national disgrace." The uninsured are not the poor, though. They are the "working poor," people who make too much to qualify for Medicaid but too little to afford health insurance, he noted. ... AIDS budget cuts lamented Associated Press, July 5, 2003 Worcester - The state's almost 40-percent cut in AIDS spending over the last few years could lead to a rise in the infection rate and a spike in the death rate in a few years, warn service providers. The state spent $51.1 million on AIDS and HIV programs during fiscal 2001. This was reduced to $41.4 million in 2002 and $35.8 million in 2003. Last month, a legislative conference committee cut Gov. W. Mitt Romney's request for AIDS funding by almost $4 million to $31.9 million for fiscal 2004, which started on Tuesday. "We're still working on assessing the impact and the areas we will need to make reductions in," Roseanne Pawelec of the state Public Health Department told the Telegram and Gazette of Worcester. The department is prioritizing counseling and testing services over some of the client support services that cover child care for people with HIV and AIDS, as well as respite care for relatives who care for people with HIV and AIDS. More than 20,000 Massachusetts residents have been diagnosed with HIV or AIDS, and state officials estimate that 8,000 more are infected. ... The answer: a national health plan Allen Giles, Lincoln, Boston Globe, July 17, 2003 <http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/198/letter/The_answer_a_national_health_pla n+.shtml> The headline on a front-page article in the July 14 Wall Street Journal reads: ''To save on health care costs, firms fire disabled workers.'' Workers are left destitute as companies abandon ''guaranteed'' commitments because it is inconvenient to stand by their employees. Can we afford to continue depending on private enterprise to stand by its promises to employees? A national health plan for everyone underwritten by the government and financed by an expanded Social Security system is the only answer. Even employers would approve: They would be off the hook for increasingly expensive health plans. And it would be less expensive for the country than the health care mess we have now. The perfect prescription Everyone has a health care reform plan. But the best approach to covering the uninsured isn't even on the table. Jacob S. Hacker, Boston Globe, July 20, 2003 <http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/201/focus/The_perfect_prescription+.shtml> Still smarting from defeat, a leading activist ruefully explained why once-promising plans to expand health coverage had failed. Health legislation, he said, affected ''powerful group interests'' and was easy fodder for scare-tactic attacks. ''All these fears, some justified, some exaggerated, and some altogether fanciful,'' he said, ''produced such a confusion of group conflicts that only a clear recognition of the need ... might have overcome it, and that clear recognition was lacking.'' All this would be an incisive assessment of the demise of the Clinton health plan in 1994 - if, that is, it hadn't been offered in 1930, and if its author, the social reformer Isaac Max Rubinow, hadn't in fact been talking about the failure of the first campaign for expanded insurance in the late 1910s. Americans have been fighting over health care for a long time. Yet the struggle has always ended as it did in the 1910s - with the failure to achieve universal coverage. ... In the absence of inclusive public insurance, private employment-based plans have become the first line of defense for most Americans - and one they are understandably reluctant to give up. As often noted, the spread of private health coverage was spurred by World War II-era wage and price controls that capped pay increases but allowed for the expansion of benefits. But it is often forgotten that there were also massive lobbying campaigns against public insurance, and that politicians showered immense tax benefits and favorable regulations on the private sector in order to forestall a government solution. ... Medicare and Medicaid, enacted in 1965, created the last major pieces of America's crazy-quilt of coverage. Today, this jury-rigged system is almost perfectly structured to stymie constructive action. Begin with a simple fact: Most Americans are insured. While an inexcusable 15 percent lack coverage (and perhaps twice as many were uninsured at least once in the past two years), most have real, if often inadequate, coverage most of the time. ... Only one longshot candidate, congressman Dennis Kucinich, has bucked the trend with a proposal to expand Medicare to all Americans. ... But it's surprising that Democrats have not revived the single truly original idea that emerged out of the Clinton-era debate: ''play-or-pay.'' This idea holds that employers (including self-employed people) must either provide coverage (''play'') or ''pay'' a payroll tax to fund public coverage. ... Editorial Comment: "Play-or-pay" was enacted in Massachusetts in 1988 but never implemented, due to immense opposition from the small business community. It remained on the books, year to year, as a political club to extort smaller increments in coverage, until finally being traded away in the mid-ninties. Below is a letter of rebuttal from long-time single-payer activist Tim Macchio, sent to the Globe but never printed. For the life of me, I do not understand why, when people talk about health care reform, they continue to ignore the real problem in today's system. Jacob Hacker, in his column "The Perfect Prescription", considers that the best reform approach is a "pay-or-play" scheme. He wants employers to provide coverage or pay to fund public coverage. Prof. Hacker may be well intended in his proposal to provide universal coverage but his proposal will only increase the money spent for a bad system. A minor point, I believe, is that the public coverage fund may end up being used by the sickest and neediest people which will make the coverage more expensive than other coverage. Until reformers tackle the real problem, any of their proposals will be too expensive. What is the real problem? Nearly 40% of the health care dollar is not used for health. Why? Because of the enormous bureaucracy that is needed to handle the maze of our current system. Until we streamline the administration of our health care system and get rid of the real waste, well intended proposals are doomed to failure. People tend to reject the idea of a "single-payer" system as being too radical and "socialized medicine." First, it is NOT "socialized medicine" because the health care providers are still independent. Second, it is NOT too radical. If Prof. Hacker believes that creating a fund to offer public coverage would not be frightening to the public, why would a single-payer system, which would create a fund for public coverage, be frightening to the public? Remember that there is no real change to the current health care delivery system except that more people could afford to use the system. What a single-payer system does is reduce the bureaucracy and use the savings to provide health care. Am I missing something? Cutting waste and providing more care sounds logical to me. Health care for, by all Baltimore Sun Editorial, July 22, 2003 Ten years after Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton launched the fiasco that began as a bold bid to overhaul the nation's health care system, pressure to provide medical insurance for all Americans is building again. A return of double-digit increases in health insurance premiums has shaken business and political leaders out of the complacency that settled in during the late '90s boom years when insurers could rely on the stock market for profits. And while insurance costs are rising, the struggling economy robs employers and individuals of the wherewithal to pay them. Further, a renewed focus on the forces that drive up insurance costs highlights the importance of universal coverage as a financial management tool. Living without health insurance isn't free in a society that takes all comers in hospital emergency rooms. All premiums include a built-in surcharge - as much as 20 percent - to pay for those who show up in hospitals for treatment in the most expensive way possible of ailments that might have been caught earlier and cheaper through regular medical care. Thus, a new feature driving the debate this time is the notion of universal health care not only as a shared privilege but a shared responsibility. Like car insurance, everyone should have basic medical coverage - subsidized at low income levels - because that's the cheapest as well as most humane way to provide care that people almost inevitably need. Of the 41 million or so Americans estimated to be without health insurance for at least a few months, the vast majority are workers and their families. The poor, disabled and elderly are covered by government programs. Nearly half of the uninsured range in age from 19 to 29, usually students or workers in part-time or entry-level jobs who don't have access to coverage that fits their budgets, according to a recent study by the Commonwealth Fund. ... But those who already have good medical coverage should be leading the charge to make sure everyone else does, too. Either way, we're all picking up the tab for those without insurance. And in this economy, a sudden reversal of fate could dispatch almost anyone to their ranks. 'Factory clinics' to cut NHS lists Critics alarmed at plans for fast-track US surgery Gaby Hinsliff, The Observer, July 27, 2003 <http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,6903,1006744,00.html> An American private healthcare firm will launch the first of a new wave of 'surgery factories' in Britain next month under radical plans to slash NHS waiting lists. The express clinics will use overseas surgical teams to perform routine operations such as hip replacements, and are expected to treat patients faster than an ordinary NHS hospital. They could even perform operations that currently require an overnight stay as 'day surgery' - meaning patients go home the same day as having the procedure. The Royal College of Nursing has already warned against the risk of creating impersonal 'sausage factories' hustling the patients through to order. But Tony Blair is expected to outline how the clinics could help reduce waits for treatment in his monthly press conference on Wednesday, as the Government struggles to resume a domestic policy agenda overshadowed by David Kelly's death. NHS patients will be treated free in the Diagnostic and Treatment Centres (DTCs) with the state footing the bill, leaving firms which run and staff the centres free to reap profits. However, they are set to be controversial, with Labour MPs who fear a creeping privatisation of healthcare. ... State-owned Hospitals in China to Embrace Market People’s Daily, July 31, 2003 <http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200307/31/print20030731_121337.html> More State-owned hospitals in China are to lose their government support and will have to adapt to the market as the country's entire health service undergoes inevitable reform, experts predicted. The unexpected epidemic of severe acute respiratory syndromes (SARS) has made the central government determined to take unprecedented action with regard to the country's public health system, according to Thursday's China Daily. The relevant departments under the State Council, such as the Ministry of Health and the State Development and Reform Commission, are making investment plans with huge budgets to improve the country's public health networks, according to a three-day national working conference on health that ended Wednesday in Beijing. One of the main tasks in the coming years will be further development of the health care system so that it can better prevent and control epidemics such as SARS. The newly added task is expected to bring new change to the system of providing medical treatment, another side of the reform campaign, said Cai Renhua, director of the China National Health Economics Institute. One change to the medical system in China, a developing country that still can only allocate limited funds to health care, is that the various levels of government should give up their ownership of and financial support to many state-owned hospitals, Cai said. ... Editorial Comment: Sorry, comrades, but we’ve been there and it doesn’t work. Australians, too, are faced with the threat of loss of healthcare rights as Bush wannabe PM John Howard tinkers away. Low paid workers say "NO" to US style health system Liquor, Hospitality & Miscellaneous Workers Union, July 31, 2003 <http://www.lhmu.org.au/lhmu/campaigns/medicare/news_1059456441_31212.html> LHMU members will tell a Senate Inquiry visiting Perth today of the importance of Medicare to workers with families. A Health Care worker, an Ambulance Officer and an Enrolled Nurse will give evidence at the inquiry today ... "Our union's members will also tell the Senators about the effects on the public health system, and Ambulance Services, with the decrease in bulk billing and the problems faced by workers in rural and remote areas of Western Australia accessing good quality bulk billed GP services," Helen Creed the National President of the LHMU said. "Australian workers do not want a US style health system where health care is part of workplace enterprise bargaining," Ms Creed said. "Medicare is part of Australian life; workers supported the introduction of Medicare in 1984 by giving up a wage increase and continue to support Medicare through the levy. Workers reject the Howard Government's proposal to undermine a universal tax funded healthcare system by introducing a co-payment. ... " Save Medicare hotline Liquor, Hospitality & Miscellaneous Workers Union, August 3, 2003 <http://www.lhmu.org.au/lhmu/campaigns/medicare/news_1059699168_9746.html> The Labor Party has launched a Save Medicare hotline, giving people a channel to lodge complaints about the health system. Labor hopes people will call the hotline and give the opposition information it could use to pressure the government on this important issue for LHMU members. The opposition says the Howard government had overseen a 12 per cent drop in bulk billing by GPs and the government is in denial about the Medicare crisis. The Shadow Minister for Health, Julia Gillard, says Labor is establishing this hotline because, under the Howard Government, Medicare is in crisis. "Labor is the party that built Medicare and believes in Medicare. Under Labor, Medicare was not in crisis - it worked. In 1996, more than 80% of visits to the doctor cost patients nothing because the doctor bulk billed," Ms Gillard said. "John Howard, in contrast, has never believed in Medicare and his policies have put Medicare on the critical list. ... " Health Care, MCAS & Tolls Added to List of Possible Ballot Questions Michael P. Norton, State House News Service, August 6, 2003 Boston - Universal health care proponents are adopting a new strategy - amending the state constitution - in their bid to force change in Massachusetts. Rather than proposing a new law, which the Legislature could alter or ignore even if adopted by voters statewide, a coalition on Wednesday filed a proposed constitutional amendment with Attorney General Thomas Reilly’s office. ... The coalition includes lawyers from high-powered Boston firms, doctors from major hospitals, the head of the state’s Democratic Party and top advocates for nurses and the homeless. The amendment would make access to health care a constitutional right. Advocates hope that if it's adopted - the earliest it could reach the statewide ballot would be 2006 - the amendment would make it the "obligation and duty" of the Legislature to enact laws to implement it. "This would be a very exciting thing if we could pull this off and we’re hoping to do just that," said Dr. John D. Goodson of Newton, a Massachusetts General Hospital internist and associate professor at Harvard Medical School. "This is a big deal. It’s a huge challenge." ... Goodson said health coverage these days is unfairly determined by one’s socio-economic status. "We have public education because John Adams wrote that into the Constitution," he said. "This is the next step in that process. We chose the constitutional route because we felt that this was at that level of social commitment. This is really a major part of the social contract, so to speak." The amendments calls for passage of laws that "will ensure that no Massachusetts resident lacks comprehensive, affordable, equitably financed health insurance coverage for all medically necessary preventive, acute and chronic health care and mental health care services, prescription drugs and devices." The amendment is not accompanied by a price tag for universal care. The cost of health care for most Massachusetts residents is covered by employer-sponsored insurance plans, taxpayer-funded health care programs and by surcharges on insurers, hospitals and the state that pay for care to the uninsured. There are 408,000 people, or more than 7 percent of all Massachusetts residents, without health insurance in 2002, according to the latest official state estimate. Many activists believe that number is higher. Critics of universal care proposals have argued its costs are prohibitive and it’s never been clear whether the government or employers would be charged with delivering coverage. Goodson says coverage can be provided to all merely by shifting billions of dollars away from administration and towards actual care. Barbara Waters Roop of Boston, a policy analyst, attorney and former general counsel in the economic affairs secretariat of the Dukakis administration, said the constitutional amendment addresses concerns of all the stakeholders in the health care system. Employers and insurers are troubled by rising costs. Those with insurance face higher costs and fear the loss of benefits. Emergency rooms are overcrowded. Practitioners are saddled with paperwork. People without insurance are nervous about getting sick. And health care providers are losing money. "This is really designed to address the very serious interests of many, many different interest groups," said Roop. "This is something that government, both state and federal, have been grappling with for decades. There is a broad dissatisfaction with the system in its present form. We just seem unable to come up with a solution. It’s a hard, hard problem to solve and it’s my hope that this will create momentum to come to some kind of solution that makes our health care system accessible to everyone and sustainable." To reach the ballot in 2006, amendment sponsors must gather 65,825 registered voter signatures by November and then get their amendment approved by 50 of the 200 members of the state Legislature sitting in a Constitutional Convention both in 2004 and again in the 2005-2006 session. It’s an intentionally lengthy process. Goodson said activists are just now gearing up organizationally. ... Down with the plutocrats Jim Hightower, Boston Globe, August 10, 2003 <http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2003/08/10/down_with_the_plutocrat s_boston_globe> I come to you as one of America’s rarest species: A progressive optimist in the age of Bush II. Some would say that this makes me either dumber than a dust bunny or someone who’s simply not paying attention. After all, the messianic Bushites have launched an executive war, deleted entire paragraphs from the Bill of Rights, shoved trillions from our public treasury into the pockets of their wealthiest backers, and generally romped gaily over labor unions, the environment, the courts, and everything else that progressives value. Worse, they’re doing it with impunity, for the Democrats in Congress have metamorphosed into meekWobblycrats, the media have mostly been cheerleaders, and the polls have shown Bush to be likeable and popular. How can you watch this mess and feel optimistic? You can, because I’m here to tell you that the Democratic Party and the media establishment have been watching the wrong mousehole. The hope is not in Washington, but at America’s grassroots, where the workaday majority is way ahead of the politicians and pundits. Any poll that probes an inch beneath the surface shows that while the affable Bush is personally popular, his policies decidedly are not. Endless war, executive secrecy, Patriot Acts I and II, the Homeland Security bully, Ashcroft’s constitutional nuttiness, Bush’s tax giveaways, shameless corporate welfare, the gutting of environmental laws, the goosed-up drug war, the FCC’s shilling for media giants, the expansion of NAFTA and the World Trade Organization, the ideological assault on Social Security and Medicare - a growing majority of people are opposed to this extremist agenda. ... Doctors Push National Health Insurance Mark Sherman, Associated Press, August 12, 2003 <http://www.comcast.net/News/HEALTHWELLNESS//XML/1500_Health__medical/aa8bf008 -c1dd-4554-9279-b9872ce4f67e.html> Washington - Nearly 8,000 US physicians are calling for government-financed national health insurance, which they say would cover every American while saving billions of dollars. Ten years after President Clinton's national health plan died in Congress, tangled in complexity and under fierce assault from the medical, insurance and pharmaceutical industries, the doctors argue that private sector solutions have failed. They contend that work in Congress to enact a prescription drug benefit for the elderly and disabled would shift more government money to private companies while offering little value to consumers. The doctors would put in place a single-payer system - essentially an upgraded and expanded version of Medicare, the government health care program for the elderly and disabled. "HMOs, launched as health care's bright hope, have raised Medicare costs by billions and fallen to the basement of public esteem. Investor-owned hospital chains, born of the promise of efficiency, have been wracked by scandal," the doctors write. "And drug firms, which have secured the highest profits and lowest taxes of any industry, price drugs out of reach of those who need them most." Their proposal was published in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association. The group of 7,782 physicians is led by Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, and former Surgeons General Julius Richmond and David Satcher. "The system cannot continue much longer the way it is," Angell, a Harvard Medical School lecturer, said in an interview. "It is clearly imploding. It isn't that single-payer is the best choice. It's the only choice." ... Crisis in health care must renew debate Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican Editorial, August 13, 2003 <http://www.masslive.com/search/index.ssf?/base/news-0/106076019342981.xml?one d> A group that has taken a close look at the nation's health care system and pronounced it in need of fundamental change - of radical overhaul, in fact - blames much of the current crisis on HMOs, investor-owned hospitals and pharmaceutical companies. The group has proposed a form of national health insurance as the only remedy. Such a proposal might be unremarkable but for one fact: The group proposing such dramatic changes is made up of nearly 8,000 physicians. They are, of course, in a position to know better than most what is ailing the existing system. They are also not prone toward publishing hyperbolic harangues just to stir up a bit of trouble. The physicians, in short, must be heard. The proposal appears in today's Journal of the American Medical Association, and leaves little room for interpretation. A system in which everyone in the nation is insured as part of one plan - called a single-payer system - is, the physicians argue, the only solution to the current maladies plaguing health care in the United States. Their indictment of the current structure isn't subtle. ... Universal health plan is endorsed Thousands of doctors back proposal in JAMA Liz Kowalczyk & Amber Mobley, Boston Globe, August 13, 2003 <http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2003/08/13/universal_health_plan_i s_endorsed_boston_globe> Thousands of US physicians have endorsed a broad proposal that would abolish for-profit hospitals and insurers and transfer all Americans into an expanded and improved Medicare program for all ages, reigniting the debate over universal health care a decade after President Clinton's failed plan. While the four physicians who wrote the plan - three of whom are affiliated with Harvard Medical School - are members of a nonprofit organization that has long pushed for universal health coverage, the new proposal is important for two reasons: It was published today in one of the country's most prestigious and its most widely circulated medical journal, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and because of the large number of doctors - nearly 8,000, including two former surgeons general - who endorsed it. ... What will they think of next? Country getting hit by avalanche of mind-boggling events Molly Ivins, Creators Syndicate, Chicago Tribune, August 14, 2003 <http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/oped/chi-0308140130aug14,1,7439936 .story> Dublin, NH - What a summer for national credulity fitness. My credulity gets a lot of exercise, since I cover Texas politics. Like Alice in Wonderland's White Queen, years of practice have enabled me to believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast. But here we are with a perfect feast of mind-bogglers, everyone's credulity stretching and straining in a giant national workout session. Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of California. Well, sure, I can handle that one. Manna from heaven for political humorists of all stripes. I'm afraid the joke will begin to wear thin, however. I know we all like to make fun of California as the epicenter of nuttiness, but in fact that big, beautiful state is in terrible trouble. A $36 billion deficit is not amusing. Teachers are being fired, programs to help the most helpless - the oldest, the youngest, the most frail - are being cut. The state's economy took a terrible blow in the artificially created energy crisis of 2000-2001. Enron and the other corporate thieves, empowered by years of the Republican mania for deregulation, drained as much as $45 billion out of the state. It's a mess and, as is often noticed, Gov. Gray Davis is so uninspiring he makes wet Kleenex look exciting. But the 200-plus other candidates should realize that no governor can be popular faced with a mess that size. Now, the fact that our government was contemplating creating a futures market in terrorism is a bit of a pause-causer. "They're doing WHAT?" we said, in a rare moment of national unity. This bonkola endeavor became more understandable when we learned John Poindexter, of Iran-contra fame, was behind it. Poindexter was up to his neck in Iran-contra, one of the battiest pieces of illegal cloak-and-dagger fruitcakery ever perpetrated by a government infested with wannabe James Bonds. You may recall that Adm. Poindexter, whose streak of insanity is cleverly disguised by a personality that makes Gray Davis look exciting, was convicted of lying to Congress (his five felony counts were overturned on appeal). He is the player who came up with the idea for the now-defunct TIA program. TIA, or Total Information Awareness, was the loony scheme under which our government would collect every scrap of information available on each of us - financial records, health, library visits, etc. - in a mind-boggling exercise of government control that would have made the old Soviet Union look like a libertarian paradise. ... Blackout If Bush Really Wants to Investigate the Cause of the Largest Blackout in American History, He Should Start with the Vice-President, Tom DeLay and Himself A BuzzFlash News Analysis, August 15, 2003 <http://www.buzzflash.com/analysis/03/08/15_blackout.html> CLAIM "We'll have time to look at it and determine whether or not our grid needs to be modernized. I happen to think it does, and have said so all along." - George Bush, 8/14/03 <http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/030814/lath155_1.html> San Diego - President Bush said he will order a review of why so many states were hit by a massive power blackout Thursday and said he suspects the nation's electrical grid will have to be modernized. <http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=544&e=4&u=/ap/bush_blackout> FACT In June of 2001, Bush opposed and the congressional GOP voted down legislation to provide $350 million worth of loans to modernize the nation's power grid because of known weaknesses in reliability and capacity. Supporters of the amendment pointed to studies by the Energy Department showing that the grid was in desperate need of upgrades as proof that their legislation sponsored by US Rep. Sam Farr (D-CA) should pass. Unfortunately, the Bush Administration lobbied against it and the Republicans voted it down three separate times: First, on a straight party line in the US House Appropriations Committee, then on a straight party line the US House Rules Committee, and finally on a party line on the floor of the full House [Roll Call Vote #169, 6/20/01]. As AP reported at the time, the amendment would have amendments that would have doubled the bill's money for energy assistance for the poor to $600 "provided $350 million to support loans to improve the capacity of transmission grids. 'It's pure demagoguery,' House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said in a brief interview regarding the Democratic amendments. 'If Democrats had an energy policy, they'd have had one in the last eight years. They have no credibility on this issue whatsoever. They are responsible for the energy crunch more than anybody I know.' Spotlighting the high political stakes, House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., took the unusual step of issuing a written statement about the committee's energy votes. He said President Bush and Republicans are 'committed to helping the Big Energy special interests' and accused them of obstruction." [AP, 6/14/01]. ... Power Outage Traced To Dim Bulb In White House The Tale Of The Brits Who Swiped 800 Jobs From New York, Carted Off $90 Million, Then Tonight, Turned Off Our Lights Greg Palast, Z Magazine, August 15, 2003 <http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=10&ItemID=4051> I can tell you all about the ne're-do-wells that put out our lights tonight. I came up against these characters - the Niagara Mohawk Power Company - some years back. You see, before I was a journalist, I worked for a living, as an investigator of corporate racketeers. In the 1980s, "NiMo" built a nuclear plant, Nine Mile Point, a brutally costly piece of hot junk for which NiMo and its partner companies charged billions to New York State's electricity ratepayers. To pull off this grand theft by kilowatt, the NiMo-led consortium fabricated cost and schedule reports, then performed a Harry Potter job on the account books. In 1988, I showed a jury a memo from an executive from one partner, Long Island Lighting, giving a lesson to a NiMo honcho on how to lie to government regulators. The jury ordered LILCO to pay $4.3 billion and, ultimately, put them out of business. And that's why, if you're in the Northeast, you're reading this by candlelight tonight. Here's what happened. After LILCO was hammered by the law, after government regulators slammed Niagara Mohawk and dozens of other book-cooking, document-doctoring utility companies all over America with fines and penalties totaling in the tens of billions of dollars, the industry leaders got together to swear never to break the regulations again. Their plan was not to follow the rules, but to ELIMINATE the rules. They called it "deregulation." It was like a committee of bank robbers figuring out how to make safecracking legal. ... The latest bogus fossil-nuke blackout: this grid should not exist Harvey Wasserman, The Free Press, August 15, 2003 <http://www.freepress.org/columns.php?strFunc=display&strID=735&strYear=2003&s trAuthor=7> This is the fourth - and worst - completely unnecessary major regional blackout in this country in forty years, dating back to 1965. Its scope - from Detroit to Ottawa to New York and New Jersey - is absolutely awesome, especially since it's due to total stupidity and corruption. This does not count the blackouts that raged through California in 2000-2001. Those were "blackmails," set by Enron and the other Bush gas cronies to rip $60 billion out of the state, leading to, among other things, the impending ouster of Gov. Gray Davis. When the lights went out, Davis kissed the feet of Southern California Edison's John Bryson, who engineered a deregulation bill that gouged $30 billion out of the ratepayers for the state's failed nukes. That opened the gates for the gas pirates to steal yet another $60 billion. Davis got caught in the backdraft. The culprits in this latest northeastern disaster are basically the same - the barons of fossil and nuclear power and their cronies in the electric utility business. Their "weapon" is an ancient electric grid that's obsolete if not obscene. It is a massively fragile Rube Goldberg device that dangerously and inefficiently carts around electricity from expensive, polluting and extremely unsafe central generating plants to buildings that waste massive amounts of energy and generate none. That the grid will crash again and again and yet again is absolutely certain. The only question is who are the real terrorists: errant crazies who blow things up, or entrenched interests that refuse to change? ... MNA Continues to Advocate for Single-Payer Health Care Recent report to JAMA shows growing support by health care professionals for government-financed health insurance Massachusetts Nurses Association, August 15, 2003 <http://www.massnurses.org/News/2003/08/single_payer.htm> Canton - As the issue of single-payer health care made headlines on Wednesday following a special report to the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA) again expressed its support for the creation of a government-financed health insurance system. "Our 22,000 members have long been advocating for a single-payer health care system in the state of Massachusetts," said Karen Higgins, RN and MNA president. "As front-line nurses, we are the first to see and care for patients who are uninsured. And because our current health care system is failing we see far too many of these patients on a daily basis, patients who wait too long to be treated, patients who go without prescriptions and patients who can’t take advantage of proper education and follow-up programs. Our present system of health care coverage is failing and the MNA applauds the more than 7,500 US doctors who brought this issue directly to JAMA." The report to JAMA, which was spearheaded by Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, and former Surgeons General Julius Richmond and David Satcher, comes at a time when numerous local and national health care and advocacy organizations have been rallying around the single-payer movement, including the 22,000 members of the MNA. In late January of 2002, in response to the Report of the Governor’s Health Task Force, the MNA issued a special report calling on the state legislature to adopt a publicly funded, single-payer health care system as proposed under the Massachusetts Health Care Trust Bill, legislation that is supported by MASS-CARE, a coalition of more than 70 health care, labor and citizen advocacy groups. ... Medicare for all Donald G. Ross, MD, North Andover, Boston Globe, August 16, 2003 <http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/letters/articles/2003/08/1 6/medicare_for_all> The endorsement by thousands of physicians of a national health insurance plan (Page A1, Aug. 13) is fueled by the recognition that universal provision of health care is "the right thing to do." Its absence in our wealthy society is a national embarrassment. In addition, it has become clear that this goal will never be reached by a system of private, for-profit insurers and hospitals motivated primarily by money. Dollars needed to pay for health care are siphoned off into bureaucratic waste and the pockets of stockholders and overpaid insurance executives. Contrary to the popular image of government-run programs, Medicare is a marvel of efficiency compared with private medical insurance providers. Replacing the patchwork of private insurers with a single government program would be a major improvement and would yield substantial savings, even after covering the uninsured. There's plenty of room for debate over just what form this plan should take, but "Medicare for everyone" is an idea whose time has come. The broken grid Thomas Oliphant, Boston Globe, August 17, 2003 <http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2003/08/17/t he_broken_grid> Washington - The largest blackout in American history occurred within a private-public system that emphasizes the generation of electricity more than its transmission. More than anything, it should remind people of all political persuasions that this is why government exists and that the safe, reliable transmission of electricity is a modern economy imperative that common sense can provide far better than political ideology. Of all the maddening ironies since the Northeast shut down on Thursday, none is more infuriating than the fact that the problem and the most sensible solutions to it have been identified for years. Worse, giant steps forward via national legislation are not all that controversial and have moved forward in Congress twice in recent years. They can be summed up in one word - reliability. That is, reliability in the form of new, mandatory rules of the electricity road that together with new investment in transmission and switching equipment and technology can lead to a far better system than the jerry-built mess that failed last week. ... Batteries Not Included Maureen Dowd, New York Times, August 17, 2003 <http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/17/opinion/17DOWD.html?th> Washington - Klaatu barada nikto. I couldn't help but flash on the 50's sci-fi classic "The Day the Earth Stood Still," watching New York and other cities plunged into sweaty darkness when the 50's equipment on the power grid gave out. ... Residents of Iraq and India, interviewed on television, seemed shocked to learn that the most technologically advanced nation had an electrical support system so rickety it is "third world," as Bill Richardson put it. (Indians call their underperforming electricity "bijli," rhymes with "Gigli.") Steamed Iraqis offered us tips, including: Sleep on the roof and take showers. ... Time for strong medicine Boston Globe Editorial, August 19, 2003 <http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2003/0 8/19/time_for_strong_medicine> Americans spend more than anyone else in the world on health care, but with 41 million people uninsured, they are paying for a system that is both unjust and inefficient. It is refreshing that at a time of retrenchment, the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association has published an article urging that the United States adopt a single-payer system that would cover every American. This approach represents a major contrast with the incrementalism that has resulted in a few improvements in coverage since the Clinton health plan died in Congress nine years ago. Now states are cutting back their Medicaid programs, employers are shifting more health costs directly to workers, and the Bush administration is showing little interest in expanding coverage. The article by the Physicians' Working Group for Single-Payer National Health Insurance asks, in effect, "Why keep paying for a dysfunctional system that costs $1.4 trillion a year?" The physicians propose replacing it with an expanded Medicare program for every American but adding a drug benefit, which Medicare lacks, and other improvements. A single-payer plan would affect the interests of powerful economic lobbies. Private health insurers would not be needed if the government paid for all care directly to providers. Drug companies would be less able to charge exorbitant prices if they had to deal with one powerful customer, the US government. Income for some physicians might go down as more money was devoted to primary care and less to some procedures that are not as demonstrably beneficial. ... "Access to comprehensive health care is a human right," says the physicians' group. A hodgepodge health care system is failing too many Americans. It's time for a new approach with a goal of universal coverage. Single payer is a prominent option. Big blackout? Imagine life in Iraq Judith Rich, Natick, Boston Globe, August 19, 2003 <http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/letters/articles/2003/08/1 9/big_blackout_imagine_life_in_iraq> Reading about the biggest blackout in US history, which shut down an area populated by 50 million people, makes me think about the 23 million Iraqi people who have endured 13 years of electrical shortages. It makes me wonder about the war strategy during the 1991 Gulf War that targeted electrical grids and water treatment plants for destruction. It makes me think about US/UN imposed sanctions that did not allow Iraq to import parts needed to repair electrical and water power. It makes me mourn the resulting loss of lives due to unclean water and inability to provide proper medical care. A country without electrical power barely functions, as we see from just 24 hours of outage in New York City. It makes me realize the cruelty of the 2003 Gulf War. It is difficult to believe that the United States would invade a country that was so weak from years of sanctions and bombing, and still struggling to regain full electrical power from the 1991 bombing. And for the past five months, once again, most of Iraq has no dependable electrical power. I wonder where the heart of America has gone when this kind of policy is accepted and justified by our government and moreover by the majority of American people. Could it be time to find less destructive ways to exert our foreign policy? 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