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Mr. Tully can join Judith Miller as MSM credibility killers.
TW editorial boards appear to be run out of the ad sales office.

With credit to Richard from Ohio as he phoned the Diane Rehm Show:

INSURANCE LOBBYISTS SAY #S 1 & 2 IN THEIR ARGUMENTS AGAINST MEDICARE FOR ALL, BUT LEAVE OUT #3.

1. No government program is any good.

2. No private insurer can compete against the government.

1+2 = Therefore private insurers are worse than the government.

Q.E.D.

Cont'd from above--

So, I thought I'd gotten things under control, but I was walking fast and the tear got caught -- and bad knee again. This year, to cut down the premium costs (my parasite increased rates by 17% to over $20,000 for one person), I opted for an even higher co-pay. I have to stay out of the hospital.

I'm trying to make it to Medicare age, so I can get my knee fixed, see a cancer doctor of my choice, etc. Only 17 and a half months to go.... Not sure I can make it--I'm trying to figure out how to get my cancer testing done close enough to my Medicare eligibility to be able to "go naked" for a few months. Praying I have no health care needs I can't plan for...

Darn those falling tree branches. Those errant blood clots.

Oh, and the high cost cholesterol lowering drug prescribed? At 50% co-pay I just can't do it...I looked into cutting higher dose pills in half or quarters, but the drug companies have developed pill shapes which are very difficult to cut into even reasonably accurate pieces. Go figure--they've sussed out what we po' folk try to do to get by....

Suggestion:

Have a listener comment, call-in segment on HOW THEY SELF-DENY HEALTH CARE. Overuse of the system? How about self-denying to underuse to save money?

I know I do--I stretch out the time my GP demands to see me in order to renew my lifelong medications for a chronic condition. It hasn't changed in 40 years, but he still insists he't renew my script wihtout a "visit". And a co-pay.

I have a torn meniscus and knee problems because of it. The ortho said I should have at least one 6-week session of physical therapy, perhaps two; then, if that didn't work, he'd operate...which would also require one to two 6-week PT sessions (being older, it might well take more time; I'm not sure how my cancer affects healing, but I now it affects my energy levels extraordinarily).

I decided I would go on the internet, learn exercises (yes, I realize I might and probably did misunderstand how to do the exercises -- I really do respect physical therapists. If I had the money I would go in a heartbeat), and try to get my muscles strong enough to make walking pain free again. I just could not afford 18 of my high co-pays. Much less 36 of them.

Cont'd bdlow--

Thank you, Nila (#38) for the great references. I have been looking for those documentaries.

Of course, if you really want to get the kind of health care reporting that represents New Yorkers and the kind of people who listen to WNYC, you can always listen to Amy Goodman's DemocracyNow.com on WBAI-FM.

Goodman also gets people on all sides of the health care debate, including conservatives. But she doesn't balance every single-payer advocate with a right winger.

The problem is that WNYC doesn't help us develop the public agenda.

That was a perfectly ridiculous segment on health care with Tully. None of his patently misleading statements were challenged.

I am utterly sick of the astoundingly selfish premise that people should only pay for care that benefits them. The entire point and structure of insurance is shared risk and shared benefit. Younger and healthier people have always paid toward the care of older, sicker people.

As for buying out of state insurance, there is a reason policies in other states cost less than in NY. In general, health care, like everything else, costs more here than in Arkansas. It also covers more and is BETTER. We also have less tolerance for seeing poor people, old people, children go without care. Cross state purchases will produce a quick dive to the bottom, as states compete to provide the cheapest policies with the least coverage.

Why doesn't anyone ask why conservatives are so afraid of competition from the public option? Isn't it because a government plan is necessarily cheaper, better, and will therefore be more attractive? Isn't it because it threatens health insurance PROFITS from denying care? So they only love competition when it's a fixed game among themselves and they are sure to win? Why do they get to argue without challenge that a government program would be inefficient and ineffective but they couldn't possibly compete with it? Why aren't they asked to excuse themselves from Medicare and VA and military and police/fire/teacher and Congressional health insurance plans, all public, if they are so bad?

Lastly, why is the opinion of a doctor who calls more important than that of any other citizen? We all have a stake in this debate, namely our health and lives. Although many doctors are fighting for single payer and universal coverage, their only additional perspective by virtue of their profession concerns program structure and profit. I still don't hear them arguing for salaries rather than fee for service.

The Wall Street Journal had a story yesterday on the U.K. national health system.

Costs:

U.K.: $2,500 per person

U.S.: $6,000 per person

The British almost uniformly support their health care system. The WSJ found one Conservative who wanted a U.S.-style reforms, and the Conservative Party is distancing themselves from him because they think he's a wacko.

Re: AARP--they are an insurance company with an membership group with some other services.

Why did AARP back the Bush prescription mess? Same reason.

I dropped my membership after that fiasco. Will not rejoin.

Repeated discussion on the following is urgently needed for a coherent discussion of health care cost in USA. Both T.H.Reid and Maggie Mahar should be interviewed:

Sick Around the World, PBS, TV PROGRAM FRONT LINE, available in internet:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/ (This documentary was based on the investigation of T. H. Reid but he asked that his name be removed from the documentary when PBS cut an important part of his finding: All industrialized countries with superior, universal, and cheaper health insurance coverage FORBID FOR PROFIT HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANIES to be part of the system.)

The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care
(August 2009) In this book, T. H. Reid goes to ten countries to find out why all the other industrialized democracies manage to provide high-quality universal health care but still spend half as much as we do. Reid explains how they do it, and why they do it. One key lesson is that most foreign countries do not use socialized medicine. Japan has 99 percent private hospitals and 5,000 health insurance companies -- but provides universal coverage and excellent care for less than half what we spend per capita.

Money-Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Health Care Costs So Much (Hardcover), by Maggie Mahar. There is a documentary with the same name base on this book: http://www.healthbeatblog.com/2009/05/moneydriven-medicineny-premiere-of-film-june-11-.html

I have just called Listener Services and left a message regarding this segment. I think that your producers were set up. Tully is clearly a flack for the right-wing and health care industries. He pretended to be a journalist and announced today's talking point, introduced last night by Sen. Conrad; namely, "the public option is dead." Your interviewer began parroting that line before the interview was over.

Tully delivered his right-wing ideological blast at the end of the segment, when there was no time left for listeners who had the real story to call and respond. He used your program as a propaganda and political tool.

I'm very upset that this was allowed to happen and hope that you'll be warier next time around. Remember that the Republicans are completely unscrupulous in achieving their goals, and that their present goal is to kill health care reform.

This is not objective journalism. It's liberals with a "kick me" sign on their behinds.

You have Nadler, who has been active on health care for 30 years, and represents the mainstream views of the people of New York (just read the New York Times comments page).

Then you "balance" that with a right wing flack who just started writing about health care and does nothing but regurgitate right-wing talking points.

I'd rather see Nadler balanced with a health-care activist who can tell us what the strategy is for responding to abandoning the public option.

The conservatives won because they even dominate programs like the Brian Lehrer show.

During the 30 Days program, you had a spokesperson from the National Federation of Independent Businesses on for 40 minutes, and 10 minutes for everybody else.

This man's world would be filled with dead and dying purchases of "health" insurance which they can afford. Junk insurance: Huge deductibles before anything is covered. For those on tight incomes, regular check ups will be postponed, illnesses will be borne until unbearable and perhaps too expensive to treat or untreatable. This guy wants a nation of bankrupted people.

Gee, make then poor enough and they won't be able to contribute to politicans of their choice either.

Win-win for the uberwealthy, uberpowerful corporatists, etc.

Killing the hosts eventually causes parasites and diseases to die off for lack of food, so they do need those mandates. Maybe deny birth control so there will be more hosts to destroy.

This guy makes NO sense.

Old people are angry that their Medicare would have to subsidize young people AND YET young people are currently subsidizing old people?

If the government subsidizes healthcare [thereby getting rid of the insurance industry's rationing] then everyone will use too much healthcare which means the government will have to ration it?

I don't think anyone besides the occasional hypochondriac goes to the doctor recreationally, and I don't think I've heard many people with more circular logic than this guy.

Cont'd:

Now, if Obama and Orszag so much want to keep private insurers, that has been done in, for example, France. But the private insurers will no longer be the profit centers Wall Street has grown to love; they will be more like regulated public utilities. They won't be giving huge donations to favored or crucially politicians.

Ths mishmash Obama is looking at is unweildy, unworkable, untested, and will be unsuccessful.

Obama may skate with the public, but regular Dems will pay the price with the electorate. Either anger, apathy, disappointment, disgust, or other feelings and even rational analysis will lead people to little or tepid support of Dems. Losing the majority? Who knows? Happened last time.

Medicare for All...the bailout for the rest of us.

From above:

Lynn Woolsey on the Diane Rehm Show on 8/3, talking about the compromised HR3200, said that the Blue Dogs had succeeded in getting $5 Billion for what has been described as "Kent Conrad's imaginary friends--co-ops" -- only $2 Billion appropriated for the public option. The $5 Billion for co-ops would not have to be repaid; the $2 Billion for the public option would have to be repaid.

Neither of these figures is serious money, but the $2 Billion is a sad joke.

I fear the WH sees some importance to private for-profit Big Insurance companies that the rest of us do not see. They and Obama seem to be bending over backwards and twisting at the same time to make a case for preserving the Big Insurers and maintaining their profitability.

Which we will pay for in taxes and higher premiums, now mandated. Massive wealth transfer from the non-wealthy to the Big Insurance companies.

Single payer is the only rational and economically feasible approach. The only one which will also provide for health CARE.

Medicare for All is the established template we have here in the US. It works, people know about it, they know it works, they know people on it, they know it works for them -- it's not buildng a new infrastructure and regulatory apparatus to extend it to all. Everyone who now has payroll withholding is set up to contribute to Medicare for All. And according to Dr. David Himmelstein single payer Medicare for All would save $400 Billion a year (old figure was $350, new one is $400), and it can cover everyone comprehensively (health, dental, vision) from Day One, Dollar One.

Cont'd below.

Mandates. The Big Insurance Parasites are hungering for more hosts from which to suck the financial life blood. Oh, they do so want those mandates! And fresh, young blood.

The Parasites have begun to kill off their hosts: individuals and businesses are unable to afford the premiums, deductibles, etc. Some literally die from the denials of care, but that works for the business plan: Cull the sick and expensive.

With the enlarged pool of victims, the Parasites can continue to feed well, perhaps charging a tad less initially, but they will need to satisfy Wall Street, pay the monstrous compensation packages to their execs, along with all their other expenses of doing business -- marketing, advertising, denial of care bureaucracy (oh, you think that will stop? They'll just have to be more cunning), paperwork, slowdown payments to providers.

And the providers will still have to deal with the snakes' pit of various rules, regulations, paperwork and digital requirements of the several Big Insurance Parasites, now whatever Obama may allow as a public option. Their costs will not go down much, if any. Thus, overall health care costs will continue to rise.

Single Payer is the only logical and economically feasible solution to our mess. Oh, and the Big Insurers don't employ all that many people. Compared to the public good of health care for all and security of receiving that health care for millions. At least 47 million, but many more have lost employer paid insurance recently, so who knows how many are "going naked" now?

Medicare for All...with a robust private option.

please note when this guy is talking about buying insurance from any state he's talking about buying insurance from the cheapest pro insurance state (ie some southern state that will offer no protection the customer.)

also when they talk about tort reform they are talking about not holding doctors accountable for malpractice.

buyer beware!

If I had gotten on the air, I would have answered his claim that people "overuse" free health care as follows:

There was a study in the New England Journal of Medicine comparing women on different Medicare programs. Some women had a co-payment of $10-20 for a mammogram, while others got mammograms free. The women who had to pay got 12% fewer mammograms.

People do *not* make better decisions if they have to pay even a small fee.

Copayments mean that fewer women will get mammograms. Do you support a system like that?

If I had gotten on the air, I would have answered his claim that people "overuse" free health care as follows:

There was a study in the New England Journal of Medicine comparing women on different Medicare programs. Some women had a co-payment of $10-20 for a mammogram, while others got mammograms free. The women who had to pay got 12% fewer mammograms.

People do *not* make better decisions if they have to pay even a small fee.

Copayments mean that fewer women will get mammograms. Do you support a system like that?

I could not get to this page without some fancy footwork. Trying to log onto wnyc.org led ONLY to the pledge page (I've already pledged and don't want to be dunned for a toll before entering the 'digital highway'). ANd ther was no way past it>

Locally two nonprofit companies HIP and GHI merged into an IPO. Weren't these entities health cooperatives and as of now is one "For profit" entity. Why were these entities merged? Who benefited from this merger? GHI was formed in 1937 and HIP was established in 1947, no the environment requires the "For profit" model? The segment with Shawn Tully should've been longer.

a shame that this man has devolved to lying; that when health care is freely available people overuse it. This is a simply lie: who sees sitting in the doctors office as recreation?
How sad that here on public radio we have to listen to this guy spin things into a right-wing fantasy. thanks to the callers who called in with a reasonable response.
Question: if "seniors" are so angry that they will have to pay of youngsters, why is the AARP supporting this?
Wouldn't it be nice if the questioner could come armed with some facts like that?

This guy is speaking nonsense. Get him off the air now.

So according to the Health Insurance liar Tully, high costs have nothing to do with insurers robbing us blind.

The People know better than liars like Tully.

oh right, we'll go to the doctor too much because we love to go to the doctors office.

i'm a healthy 40 year old and my doctor is always making me go for all kinds of tests. i don't even tell him when i'm having an issue because he'll up my appointments and make me do tests and more tests.

Now the host is stating as if fact, "the public option is off the table." It's not off the table!

frustrating.

Mr. Tully is clearly a partisan, labeling him simply as a journalist is dishonest.

Please, leave such tactics to your colleagues on "The Takeaway", which I know better than to listen to.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller has asked the GAO to study health co-ops bcz there are only about 20 extant that he could find in doing his research. Only two of them are large and they are the only two licensed (for whatever that is worth).

I have not seen much coverage of his concerns -- a brief interview on NPR's ATC, an interview on the Ed Schulz Show. The Big MCM? Bupkis. (Unless very recent -- I haven't kept up on my googling.)

I'm going to Japan early next year for work reasons. Thanks to the nature of my job, I will be covered under Japan's national health care. After the way the White House has caved over health care reform thanks to the idiotic right wing and seeing how this country has been given to the corporations, I am seriously considering staying there.

Shawn Tully IS LYING ABOUT RATIONING. He is lying lying lying.

1. The tales of rationing in Canada, Britain and elsewhere do not rise above the anecdotal. MOST of the claims by Tully et al are FALSE.

2. How many times must it be said? THE US ALREADY HAS RATIONING. The health insurers ration. That's what they do when the cut people who get ill, deny care to people, etc etc,

Is this so complicated for conservatives like Tully to grasp?

this guy is infuriating - sean telly - across state lines will create competition. No, we have to start someplace real. I am disappointed - we need the public option in so many areas of our lives. It's a leveler. This country is really selling out faster than fast.

This is mobile nation, people work and do buiness, travel across state lines. It's crazy to continue the private insurers' arbitrary geographic coverage zones.

It's insane to break things down into these little entities, either for co-ops or HMO style "groups." People need to know they're covered whenever, wherever they need care -- and not just for stabilzation in an ER.

Obama studied to be a community organizer, and he did work at that for a little while. What did he learn about negotiating? Bupkis?

I have to think, given Obama's intellect, that he knows what he's doing, that he did not want the public plan he was forced to campaign on. Indeed, at at least one private donors meeting, he told them he probably wouldn't be able to do what he'd told the public he would do about health care and education.

Guess we can expect to disappointed some more.

The administration never said, "the public option is off the table." The guest is misinterpreting the facts. What was stated was, the public option is still preferred, but bills without it won't be killed automatically.

YOU e-mail the White House (sorry about the typo). Go to whitehouse.gov for the e-mail form.

here's my plan: let the insurance company shareholders have EVERYTHING they want after 5 years when the public yells uncle we'll have real reform.
MEDICARE FOR ALL!!

I'll tell you what the point is. If Obama just gives up totally, nothing will be done. NOTHING. If he can't get the public option passed, reform is better than nothing, because at least it will:

1- take us one step closer to government regulated health coverage by mere virtue of the reforms government will impose on them

2- make us all a little more open-minded about change, and perhaps lead us to the public option later.

3- whatever reforms are put into effect will be applied to whatever public option may be passed later

If people can't be dragged kicking and screaming to the public option, then we can at least make a start, with reform.

Health-care reform without a public option is meaningless. It means subsidizing for-profit insurance companies by subsidizing premium dollars for low-cost plans which don't do much to pay for care when it becomes necessary--high copays, deductibles, and possibly "medical savings accounts."

We had a not-for-profit system years back in the Blue Cross/Blue Shield system. But by 1975 the MBAs came in and health insurers "cherry picked" younger people and raised premiums on older people.

To be fair, many people feel entitled to the latest, most expensive, and--often--not the best healthcare practices. And it is true that something like 2/3 of medical expenses occur in the last several years of life. But instead of asking simply whether a given procedure would have either a good chance of success (like a bone-marrow transplant) for times to come, or would not cause a different outcome (like aggressive therapy for small-cell cancer of the urinary bladder), the overriding concern of "utilization review" is the health insurer's profits.

So it's turned into a rotten system with huge salaries for people who run it, some stockholder dividend, and more efficient (and profitable!) means of delivering death than the Final Solution (which never turned a profit).

And they have the money--and bought enough politicians--to keep on doing this.

Don't listen to Tully; he's pumping for the death of the public option.

Call your Congress person and Senators today, and tell them to vote against ANY Bill w/o a public option, and to e-mail the Whitehouse and let President Obama know that you've made the call.

A government-run health insurance would put private health insurance out of business, the same way the government-run postal service is putting FedEx, UPS, DHL, etc out of business, right?

No the Democrats won't vote for it. 72% of the public supports the public option. The right-wing will continue to agitate to kill any health care plan.

The public option is not dead. Tully is deaf.

This guy is an idiot. If you read the link to his column, he says that the "ideal system" would be a "market."

So, according to Shawn Tully, when Kent Conrad says the votes aren't there, he's right.

But when liberals and progressives say the votes aren't there, they're wrong.

Maybe Shawn Tully should try something called journalism instead of just being an editorial shill for pharmaceutical and insurance advertisers in the pages of Fortune.

Tully works for Fortune and is trying to make killing the option a fait accompli. It's not.

These are not "moderate". These are conservatives, as Paul Krugman, the Nobel laureate economist, calls them.

Could the guest explain what the point is of health care reform WITHOUT a public option? I don't understand.