Dear Senators, Why Bother

by: Jill Richardson

Tue Nov 24, 2009 at 23:19:18 PM PST

Earlier this year, I tried to get health care coverage. I had just left a job that gave me health insurance and the insurance companies were not allowed to deny me coverage for a certain period of time. I applied to several insurers. I got the same response from each of them. No, they wouldn't give me the plan I was applying for. I take too many medications for my migraines. But they are happy to sell me a plan that costs three times as much. A plan I can't afford, which costs 50% more than I pay out of pocket for full-price prescription drugs each month. That's what telling a private insurance company they can't deny someone for preconditions gets you. Apparently, that's all this bill is going to get us too.

If a public option passes - without a trigger and assuming my state won't opt out - and if I am allowed to actually get the public option as my insurance, that's what I'd like to do. But that's a lot of "ifs." Why can't we just have real health reform? Why can't they just give Medicare to everybody?

health care - lower the cost, and pay for the rest

by: teacherken

Sat Sep 19, 2009 at 06:18:53 AM PDT

Imagine that someone proposed a path to universal health care that would significantly lower the cost and provide the means to pay for the rest of it.  One would think that politicians and the American people would jump at the chance.  And yet. . .  I had a parent who is a geologist speak with my students on energy policy this week, and among the things he reminded them is that there is no free lunch and everything is connected to everything else.

This diary is written as a result of two op eds in today's major newspapers.  Neal Bernard, a nutrition researcher and president of the  Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine offer Neal Barnard: Another Way to Reduce Costs -- Get Healthier, and the Boston Globe's Derrick Jackson argues Soda Tax:  It's the Real Thing

You should read both.  I will explore both and offer some thoughts of my own.

About Giving Health Care to Undocumented Workers

by: Jill Richardson

Sat Sep 12, 2009 at 11:17:37 AM PDT

They pick our grapes and our tomatoes and they process our meat. They work on dairy farms and they grow and pick our strawberries. They work for low wages and live in abysmal conditions. In return, we get cheap food. Part of the cost of that food should be a living wage and health care for the people who grow it, pick it, and process it. Of course, if we did that, the food might not be so cheap. But without paying a living wage, we are all complicit in causing human suffering. Pretending that it is the undocumented workers' fault for coming here ignores the fact that we are part of the system that employs them and oppresses them.

The real criminals in this system are those who employ the undocumented workers. If you don't want "illegals" in this country, crack down on the illegal employers. If there weren't jobs to be had, no one would come here illegally. But as long as there are jobs, as long as we are benefiting from their labor, we owe them basic human rights like health coverage in return for their work.

Of course, extending health benefits to undocumented workers isn't politically possible right now. It's still a crapshoot whether it's politically possible to insure and care for American citizens. I'm all for starting with the low-hanging fruit, which is in this case extending coverage via a public option to people who are in this country legally. Sadly, it doesn't seem to be that "low hanging" but I'm still reaching for it.  Actually reforming immigration will have to wait for another day. In the meantime, I'm grateful that my food comes primarily from people I know, who receive a living wage for their labor. I don't want to be complicit in a system of oppression.

Michael Pollan on Health Care Reform

by: Jill Richardson

Thu Sep 10, 2009 at 10:44:23 AM PDT

The moment these new [health care reform] rules take effect, health insurance companies will promptly discover they have a powerful interest in reducing rates of obesity and chronic diseases linked to diet. A patient with Type 2 diabetes incurs additional health care costs of more than $6,600 a year; over a lifetime, that can come to more than $400,000. Insurers will quickly figure out that every case of Type 2 diabetes they can prevent adds $400,000 to their bottom line. Suddenly, every can of soda or Happy Meal or chicken nugget on a school lunch menu will look like a threat to future profits.

When health insurers can no longer evade much of the cost of treating the collateral damage of the American diet, the movement to reform the food system - everything from farm policy to food marketing and school lunches - will acquire a powerful and wealthy ally, something it hasn't really ever had before.

In other words, Pollan is FOR health care reform, but he thinks its not enough. He calls our food system "the elephant in the room" that is harming our health and raising health care costs. He points out that the government is on the brink of subsidizing both the causes of and the care for Type 2 diabetes.

The good news, according to Pollan, is that once we DO change the rules for the insurance industry, once they have to actually pay for the cost of care for sick patients, they will realize that good food is their friend. More good food (or less junk) = healthier patients = more profits for the insurance industry. So if and when that happens, will they get behind major reform of the food system? One can only hope.

I'm thrilled Pollan is saying this. It's more or less what I've been saying for a while... only I don't get to publish op eds in the New York Times. Thank goodness somebody with that kind of clout and national platform is speaking up!

The Kickass Bill Marler Says Food Safety Reform Will Lower Health Care Costs

by: Jill Richardson

Wed Sep 09, 2009 at 08:43:30 AM PDT

In Room 519 of Kindred Hospital, Linda Rivera can no longer speak.

Her mute state, punctuated only by groans, is the latest downturn in the swift collapse of her health that began in May when she curled up on her living room couch and nonchalantly ate several spoonfuls of the Nestlé cookie dough her family had been consuming for years. Federal health officials believe she is among 80 people in 31 states sickened by cookie dough contaminated with a deadly bacteria, E. coli O157:H7.

The impact of the infection has been especially severe for Rivera and nine other victims who developed a life-threatening complication known as hemolytic uremic syndrome. One, a 4-year-old girl from South Carolina, had a stroke and is partially paralyzed.

Last week, I met with legendary food safety lawyer Bill Marler in his office in Seattle. Not to distract from the serious topic at hand, I must mention that the view from his office is AMAZING - a 66th floor view of Puget Sound out of two windows of his corner office that take up most of their respective walls. Marler was incredibly nice in person, as he is online, but he was also intense about the topic of food safety (as you'd expect). After you meet people like Linda Rivera and her family who suffer so much from tainted foods, there's just no way to be casual about the subject.

As you can read on Marler's blog, he says that food safety reform must be part of health care reform. Consider: 76 million Americans are sickened by food poisoning each year, 325,000 are hospitalized, and at least 5,000 die. Every one one of those illnesses is preventable, as are the lost life, productivity, and health care costs. That's an awful lot of money.

Ah, Irony

by: Jill Richardson

Fri Sep 04, 2009 at 00:52:44 AM PDT

I'm sorry about the guy's finger, but what an asshole. He's got socialized medicine himself (Medicare) and yet he doesn't want the rest of us to get health care. Jerk. We need Medicare for All. Now.

Food's Role in the Health Care Crisis

by: Jill Richardson

Thu Aug 27, 2009 at 11:20:31 AM PDT

We must address our food system if we want to reduce the increasing costs of health care. The health care reform debate can be divided into two major issues: increasing access and decreasing costs. On one hand, no reform is complete until we find a way to provide all Americans with adequate insurance coverage. But even after we insure all Americans, we must deal with rising medical costs that result from preventable illnesses.

Obama Connects Food to Health

by: Jill Richardson

Thu Aug 20, 2009 at 14:21:57 PM PDT

I have a two-part question.  One is choice, the choice that we make to eat the foods that we eat and the lifestyle that we choose to engage in.  And the second part, your family is very fit.  What do you and the First Lady and the girls do to encourage physical fitness, and what can we -- not the government, not private corporations -- do to encourage activity in the public-school system and in young people?

I've got a problem with the way this question is worded. There's no good substitute for the term "food choices" but they aren't always choices. You need to eat and that's not a choice. Poor people choose not to eat healthy food just like I choose not to buy a Rolls Royce. When the good stuff is never an option in the first place, how can you call a person's diet a "choice"? Second, if the government is (in part) responsible for the problems in our food system, then they also need to be part of the solution. We can't do it without government change. Period.

That said, Obama answers the question very well (below). Like me, he connects school lunch to children's health, and he talks about bringing local farm products into schools for the kids to eat. So now let's see if he can walk his talk.

A Former Whole Foods Employee's View of Whole Foods

by: Jill Richardson

Sat Aug 15, 2009 at 11:57:30 AM PDT

I've been asked by several people to weigh in on Whole Foods (or WFM for short... the M stands for Market). I worked there for 5 months in 2007 and I wrote a chapter about it in my book, Recipe for America: Why Our Food System is Broken and What We Can Do To Fix It. So here's my take on it...

URGENT: Single Payer Day - UHC and Single Payer - Today is the day, folks

by: MinistryOfTruth

Tue Jul 21, 2009 at 11:17:23 AM PDT

Crosspsoted from docudharma.com courtesy of diarist RUKind and at The Progressive Electorate.com

Woke up to an e-mail from change.org. A petition request to protest UHC. United Health Care for those who have not had the misfortune to cross paths with them. They asked for a personal comment and here is mine:

It's no coincidence that your e-mail arrived in my inbox this morning. It is raining today and I'm a small-plot organic farmer so I have some inside time today. This Tue morn is dedicated to doing battle with UHC and the idiots who make its policies.

Those policies are designed to cheat the members who pay big money for their premiums. We get our UHC through my wife's employment at Home Depot. I am disabled and we get by on her $22k a year but mostly we need that job just for the health insurance.

UHC are masters at mis-billing, avoidance of contract fulfillment and general outright fraud. I have friends who are doctors and their side of the story is even worse than mine as a poor patient.

I will lose an otherwise productive inside day spending it on the phone, delving the depths of incomprehensible automated telephone voice mail menus, only to find myself at the wrong department.

If by some stroke of luck I find a human being, I may be transferred to the right department - and disconnected while waiting five minutes on hold. Then I will start all over again until I get through.

Some of today's issues are interesting. My wife took family leave to tend to her dying mother last year. We paid all of our co-pays on time. But somehow I disappeared from the rolls for about two weeks during the transition back to full-time post-maternal-death. Instead of being charged $50 - $15- co-pays, I am being charged in the hundreds for procedures that should have been covered.

Your prayers for my patience are appreciated. The problem is not the underpaid, overworked employee on the other end of the phone who bears the brunt of the collective anger. Pray for them. They are ou. The problem is in the executive and upper managerial suites, the board, and the Street. All compensation flows to the top these days. All these greed-heads want is to make their quarterly numbers thereby triggering their bonuses. All else means nothing.

These people have no humanity. They are lying, extorting and bribing their asses off today to kill single payer health care. Please join in, call your congressman and help get this done right. It is NOW or NEVER on health care reform. Our time has come. Shame on us if we let it slip by.

God bless you all.

You Can't Fix Rising Health Care Costs Without Fixing Food

by: Jill Richardson

Tue Jul 21, 2009 at 06:16:23 AM PDT

This graph shows the percentage increase in health care costs between 2001 and 2006 for people classified as "Normal" weight, overweight, and obese.

In a recent blog post over at FoodPolitics.com, Marion Nestle summed it up best. Recently released CDC stats show that the percentage of Americans engaged in physical activity is remaining stable, while obesity and diabetes rates are rising in tandem with one another. Our problem is food. And given the fact that the problem is getting worse, we've gotta do something about it. Not just for our wallets, but for our quality of life.

UPDATE: I posted this on DailyKos and some people thought I meant that we don't need a public option or single payer, and we should replace those ideas with national weight loss. Nothing could be further from the truth. No amount of food system reform can provide care to the 50 million uninsured Americans. We need Congress to fix that. What I am arguing is that in addition to that, in order to control costs and improve quality of life, we ALSO need to fix our food system.

Meet the Lobbyists: Federation of American Hospitals

by: Jill Richardson

Sun Jul 12, 2009 at 00:32:22 AM PDT

So what did they lobby on with that $900,000? A price transparency amendment to a health care bill that would mandate states to provide a system to have pricing information for hospitals and healthcare providers available to the public; the SCHIP program; the stimulus; Obama's health care reform; HR 1776, a bill that would link quality measures to payments for inpatient services; a ban on physicians referring patients to hospitals that they own shares in; funding for emergency medicine for undocumented immigrants; the budget; proposed changes to the TRICARE payment system; and the Employee Free Choice Act.

Here are their lobbyists...

Funny Health Care Video

by: Jill Richardson

Fri Jun 26, 2009 at 10:58:57 AM PDT

Thom Hartmann's been playing this video on his show and it is HIGHlarious! Unfortunately, it's a pretty accurate portrayal of how the health insurance industry actually works. Health care IS a food issue because 1) until farming comes with health care, it won't be a viable career option for many people and 2) when people aren't so financially strained by health costs, they can devote more money to better food.

The Health Insurance Industry Doesn't Deserve Our Trust

by: Jill Richardson

Thu Jun 25, 2009 at 21:00:26 PM PDT

Farmers often depend on off farm jobs to provide health insurance, if that wasn't an option they could generally afford an individual plan. Farming is one of the most dangerous occupations in America, heavy machinery, large animals, long hours in the sun, chemicals and that always present independent streak that keeps us from seeing the doctor when we should. Still, we need insurance.

Mike Lux: Trash the Trigger

by: Jill Richardson

Tue Jun 02, 2009 at 13:06:12 PM PDT

Well, our esteemed leaders in Washington (with the help of the insurance companies who fund their campaigns) have come up with a similar tactic in order to appear to support health care reform and a public option without actually having to support one. As Mike Lux writes:

the idea is to write a "trigger" that will allow for a public option only under certain conditions, but write the legislation so that those conditions would never get met in the real world.

The conditions for the trigger are like the gay man's specifications for a woman he's willing to date. What a clever way to appear "moderate" and still keep Americans from enjoying the health care that the entire rest of the industrialized world enjoys. Just like the gay Taiwanese man would "compromise" to date a woman with practically inhuman qualities, the politicians are ready to compromise by giving us a public health care option in the face of impossible-to-meet conditions that will never occur.

While I am first and foremost an advocate of single payor health care, I like the idea of the public plan option as a politically feasible way to pass a reform bill. The idea is that all Americans would be eligible to buy into a public health care plan that has low overhead costs and provides adequate care. If you already have insurance with a private company and you like your insurance, then you can keep your insurance. There's no requirement to sign up for the public plan - it's just an option. However, because all private companies have to pay overhead for things like marketing and outrageous CEO salaries (and they make their money by denying patients care), the public plan will no doubt be a better deal than any other option. It's a back door way to get to single payor, and I support it.

This is a food blog, but health care IS related to food. Intimately. Because you need farmers if you want food, and our employer-based health care system represents an enormous disincentive to anyone who might wish to become a farmer. The Center for Rural Affairs has been beating the health care drum more than any other issue for this very reason. You can see a blog post about it by ag policy expert Steph Larsen here.