health and human services

A story appearing in the Murdoch owned Wall Street Journal today saying that fast food giant McDonalds is planning on dropping it’s health care coverage for employees because of requirements tied to the new health care bill:

While many restaurants don't offer health coverage, McDonald's provides mini-med plans for workers at 10,500 U.S. locations, most of them franchised. A single worker can pay $14 a week for a plan that caps annual benefits at $2,000, or about $32 a week to get coverage up to $10,000 a year.

Last week, a senior McDonald's official informed the Department of Health and Human Services that the restaurant chain's insurer won't meet a 2011 requirement to spend at least 80% to 85% of its premium revenue on medical care.

But now McDonalds is denying this report:

McDonald's denies reports it's considering dropping health care coverage for some employees in response to a provision of the health care overhaul.

The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday, citing a memo from McDonald's to federal officials, that McDonald's has warned regulators it could drop its plan for some 30,000 workers unless the government waives a new requirement in the health care overhaul.

The company says in a statement Thursday it has been speaking with federal agencies to understand the law.

The healthcare Gestapo is up to their old tricks:

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today will release a new report showing more dramatic health insurance premium increases are proposed in Connecticut, Maine, Michigan, Oregon, Rhode Island and Washington.

Keying off the Obama administration's recent probe into a planned 39 percent rate hike from Anthem Blue Cross in California, Sebelius will detail large increases in six other states and say that given record insurer profits, health care reform has never been more urgent.

At 11:30 a.m. today, Sebelius will release the report, obtained by TPMDC and titled "Insurance Companies Prosper, Families Suffer: Our Broken Health Insurance System."

It finds that Anthem's rate increase (now delayed until May) is "not unique" and that experts say premiums will keep rising.

The report quotes National Association of Insurance Commissioners officials predicting the nation will "see rate increases of 20, 25, 30 percent."

(emphasis added)

And yet the Republicans want to block healthcare reform, placing politics above national interest.

James Pethokoukis is scared that Daschle means the end of conservatism:

The GOP strategist had been joking about the upcoming presidential election and giving his humorous assessments of the candidates. Then he suddenly cut out the schtick and got scary serious. "Let me tell you something, if Democrats take the White House and pass a big-government healthcare plan, that's it. Game over. Government will dominate the economy like it does in Europe. Conservatives will spend the rest of their lives trying to turn things around and they will fail."

And it turns out that the fearsome harbinger of free-market doom is the mild-mannered ex-U.S. senator with the little, red glasses, Tom Daschle. He'll be the guy shepherding President Barack Obama's healthcare plan through Congress via his probable role as secretary of health and human services. At the core of Daschle's thinking on the subject is the creation of a "Federal Health Board that would resemble our current Federal Reserve Board" and ensure "harmonization across public programs of health-care protocols, benefits, and transparency." (Forget secretary of state, Hillary Clinton should shoot for chairman of Fed Health and run one seventh of the U.S. economy.) And the subject of that "harmonization" would be a $100 billion to $150 billion a year plan that would let individuals (and small businesses) buy insurance from private companies or from a government plan.

Ironically conservatives always pull out the “oh bad Europe” model when discussing the direction of America. That fact is that Europe is doing a lot better than the U.S. right now. But what really strikes me is how conservatives gawk over a $100 to $150 billion a year plan. They sure had no problem dumping that kind of money into a totally useless war. They sure don’t complain when the Pentagon continues to ask for more and more money every year. Yet when it comes to something that can provide a healthy and more productive workforce, they complain? Why do conservatives hate the American economy so much?

Healthcare costs are costing our economy business and jobs. That’s a proven fact. When companies have to fork out millions to insure their employees, that gives them less to pay their employees and cuts into the bottom line. In the manufacturing and service sector, those costs are also passed onto the consumer. Benefit costs actually account for close to 30% of compensation costs. Almost double that in Canada, where there is universal healthcare. And to rub salt into that wound, U.S. companies that move to Canada end up being able to pay their employees more, because they are saving so much money. That means that compensation costs are actually less to the north. Even GM CEO Rick Wagoner admits that healthcare alone adds about $1,500 to the cost of every car.

Why do they hate our seniors?

The Senate blocked legislation on Wednesday that would let the government negotiate Medicare drug prices. Democrats couldn't muster the 60 votes needed to bring the bill up for a vote.

Under the Medicare drug benefit, private insurance plans negotiate with drug makers over the price of medicine for their customers. About 22 million seniors and the disabled are enrolled in such plans. Some lawmakers, mostly Democrats, contend the government could use its leverage to drive a better bargain than individual insurers, which would lower the cost of the program for taxpayers and seniors.

But Republicans countered Wednesday that the program is costing much less than expected precisely because it's the private sector, not the secretary of Health and Human Services, conducting the negotiations. They successfully blocked a motion to proceed to the bill. The tally was 55-42, five short of the votes needed to move ahead

So we get to stick with the current program as is. Let's see how that works.

 A senior picks a program before January 1 because that program's formulary contains their prescription drugs. Come February, the program decides to change the formulary and drop this person's drugs. That person is now stuck with needed drugs not being covered for the rest of the year. They can not change programs again until first of the year.

I know people will say this is the extreme and to them I say you are flat out wrong. This happens on a daily basis. I know of countless seniors that had to stop taking drugs or weren't able to pay for other things such as electric because of this screwed up system.

Remember the Medicare debacle that plagued seniors the first of the year? Well Bush is still wanting to mess with Medicare, and this time his target is the actual doctors and hospitals:

The Bush administration says it plans sweeping changes in Medicare payments to hospitals that could cut payments by 20 percent to 30 percent for many complex treatments and new technologies.

The changes, the biggest since the current payment system was adopted in 1983, are meant to improve the accuracy of payment rates. But doctors, hospitals and patient groups say the effects could be devastating.

Federal officials said that biases and distortions in the current system had created financial incentives for hospitals to treat certain patients, on whom they could make money, and to avoid others, who were less profitable.

Michael O. Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services, said the new system would be more accurate because payments would be based on hospital costs, rather than on charges, and would be adjusted to reflect the severity of a patient’s illness. A hospital now receives the same amount for a patient with a particular condition, like pneumonia, regardless of whether the illness is mild or severe

While the plan may sound great, in the end the people who really pay will be the patients. Current Medicare covers 80% of medical bills, so a typical one day stay in a hospital with no extra tests generally cost a patient between $200-$300. This will result in higher charges to the patients and most greater chances of patients being released from hospitals pre-maturely.

The more I read this story and think about it, the more pissed off I get.
Last week the House passed the tax cuts to extend them to 2010. The tax cuts
pertain mainly to capital gains and dividends, meaning that they affect the
upper-middle and upper classes of this country.

Yesterday the House took this action:

WASHINGTON -- Congressional Republicans made progress on twin tracks
Wednesday toward their end-of-year budget goals, passing a bill freezing or
cutting back spending on medical research and education and nearing
agreement on cuts to the Medicaid health care program for the poor.

The first measure, a $602 billion bill funding a wide variety of health,
education and labor programs, passed the House on a 215-213 vote. It would
cut federal aid to education for the first time in a decade, and spread
about $1.4 billion in cuts across the departments of Labor, Health and Human
Services, and Education.

View complete article

here.

This congress has once again proven they don't give a damn about the middle
and lower classes of this country. We have heard over the years that America is
changing and its work force must be trained for that change. What a better way
to prepare the country for that than to cut education and labor programs.

Congress is doing everything within its power to further separate the upper
class from the middle and lower classes. With the cost of campaigns rising to
over $30 million a seat, this action is destroying our democracy. In other
words, the Republicans in Congress have squashed the "American dream" and
destroyed our nation even more. All this in the name of greed.