Elizabeth Edwards: ‘Most Preventable Cause Of Unnecessary Suffering’ Is Lack Of Health Insurance
Elizabeth Edwards: ‘Most Preventable Cause Of Unnecessary Suffering’ Is Lack Of Health Insurance
Conservatives love to crow that the United States has “the best health care in the world.” Yet these same conservatives overlook the fact that 47 million Americans lack any health insurance at all, leaving them shut out of access to this world-class health care.
Indeed, as Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Elizabeth Edwards told the Senate Health Committee today, “It doesn’t matter what kind of services we have if we don’t have access to them”:
Health insurance matters. The quality of coverage, of course, matters, but health insurance itself is really crucial part of this. Probably the most preventable cause of unnecessary suffering in our health care system is the lack of adequate health insurance. … We know how to lengthen and improve the lives of people with cancer. But we’ve chosen as a nation to turn our backs on some of us who have the disease. I urge you to reform health care responsibly, morally, and aggressively.
Watch it:
Edwards urged the senators to “build on the successful system of employer-based coverage,” a system that covers 158 million Americans — and that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has promised to completely dismantle. Instead, he has proposed a paltry $5,000 tax credit for individuals to fend for themselves in the health insurance market, even though the average annual premium of an employer-based insurance policy is $12,000.
Edwards also mentioned the disturbing disparities in access faced by minorities. FamiliesUSA writes, “Although racial and ethnic minorities constitute one third of the total U.S. population, they comprise more than one half (52 percent) of the uninsured population. In fact, in 2003, 23 million of the 45 million uninsured were racial and ethnic minority Americans.” Rather than cover these people, McCain’s plan could result in 158 million more Americans losing their health insurance.
Suicides among Iraq and Afghanistan war vets may exceed combat deaths.
Suicides among Iraq and Afghanistan war vets may exceed combat deaths.
Thomas Insel — director of the National Institute of Mental Health and the U.S. government’s top psychiatric researcher — said today that “the number of suicides among veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may exceed the combat death toll because of inadequate mental health care.” Bloomberg reports:
Insel echoed a Rand Corporation study published last month that found about 20 percent of returning U.S. soldiers have post-traumatic stress disorder or depression, and only half of them receive treatment. About 1.6 million U.S. troops have fought in the two wars since October 2001, the report said. About 4,560 soldiers had died in the conflicts as of today, the Defense Department reported on its Web site.
Based on those figures and established suicide rates for similar patients who commonly develop substance abuse and other complications of post-traumatic stress disorder, “it’s quite possible that the suicides and psychiatric mortality of this war could trump the combat deaths,” Insel said.
McCain introduced at health care event by health care lobbyist.
McCain introduced at health care event by health care lobbyist.
At his health care policy event yesterday at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute in Florida, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was introduced by the institute’s chairman, former Republican senator Connie Mack. But, as Hotline reports, Mack is more than just a chairman. He’s also a registered state lobbyist “advocating for health insurance companies“:
According to the official site of the Florida Legislature, Mack is registered in 2008 to lobby for Prestige Health Choice, a Florida company. The co. is “filing to become approved by the state of Florida as a Provider Service Network,” and according to a company release dated Nov. 16, 2007, “Prestige will first provide Medicaid managed care services to Florida residents.”
According to Hotline’s Jennifer Skalka, “the McCain campaign lobbied On Call feverishly to tank” its reporting on Mack’s role as a lobbyist, calling the story “ludicrous, absurd and ridiculous.”
Elizabeth Edwards: McCain’s health plan ’shows he is completely out of touch’ with reality.
Elizabeth Edwards: McCain’s health plan ’shows he is completely out of touch’ with reality.
Center for American Progress Action Fund senior fellow Elizabeth Edwards, who has in the past pointed out that Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) health care policies would exclude people with preexisting conditions like herself, appeared on MSNBC today to discuss the issue. Noting that employer-based health care typically costs families about $12,000, Edwards explained that McCain’s paltry $5,000 tax credit proposal is woefully inadequate:
If Sen. McCain thinks that individuals — who are at a bargaining power disadvantage from big companies buying lots and lots of polices — are going to go out and by comparable policies for $5,000 it shows that he is completely out of touch with what is happening in the health care system in America today.
Watch it:
As The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn put it, McCain’s “great new plan isn’t new or great. And it still wouldn’t help Elizabeth Edwards get decent insurance.”
McCain Adviser Holtz-Eakin’s Favorite Campaign Pledge: We’ll Get Around To Details Later
McCain Adviser Holtz-Eakin’s Favorite Campaign Pledge: We’ll Get Around To Details Later
Today, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) will give a speech on health care in Florida, where he will offer broad platitudes about “chang[ing] the whole dynamic of the current system” and addressing “the the fundamental problems of cost and access.” Yet when legitimate questions have been raised about his health plans, McCain — and his chief economic adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin — have been absent on specifics. “So, a little more detail, but remember, it is April, and the election’s in November, so not everything will happen tomorrow or this week,” Holtz-Eakin told reporters yesterday.
Punting on the issues seems to be the only firm commitment Holtz-Eakin will give, whether he’s discussing McCain’s approach to climate change, his tax plan, or his health care policy:
ON SPENDING CUTS
– “Mr. Holtz-Eakin says the mistake that people are making is treating the McCain platform as if it were a finished piece of work. ‘It’s April,’ he said. ‘We have until November.’ The campaign will later unveil ‘base broadeners’ in the corporate tax code — that is, loopholes it will eliminate — that will pay for the faster investment write-offs, for example.” [NYT, 4/23/08]ON CLIMATE POLICY
– “He [McCain] certainly would revise the bill [Lieberman-Warner] in light of what’s transpired, and I expect he’ll put out, during the course of the campaign, something like an updated version of his view of how it should go.” [Holtz-Eakin interview with Grist, 4/21/08]– “I’m just going to defer until he [McCain] puts out the climate policy.” [Holtz-Eakin interview with Grist, 4/21/08]
ON HEALTH CARE
– “‘We are working on it,’ said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, McCain’s top policy adviser. ‘We’ll put out more details. As we do, it will be clearer to people.’” [Boston Globe, 4/3/08]ON McCAIN’S TAX PLAN
– “Having secured the Republican nomination, McCain now also seems uncomfortable with the huge tax cuts he proposed months ago, and the campaign seems to be searching for a course correction. Holtz-Eakin has said that McCain ‘is by no means done making tax proposals.‘” [CBS News, 4/20/08]
The Straight Talk express apparently can’t navigate through specifics.
McCain Kicks Off Health Care Tour At Children’s Hospital That Supported SCHIP Expansion He Opposed
McCain Kicks Off Health Care Tour At Children’s Hospital That Supported SCHIP Expansion He Opposed
Kicking off his “Call to Action Tour” today, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) toured Miami Children’s Hospital, where “he met and listened to some of its young patients and their parents.” In remarks delivered at the hospital, McCain pledged that he would “work to eliminate the worries over the availability and cost of health care”:
As President, I pledge to preserve the foundations that deliver innovation and hope to those who are in need of modern medicine. I will work to eliminate the worries over the availability and cost of health care that trouble the waking hours and disturb the sleep of more Americans than any other single domestic issue.
McCain’s use of the Florida children’s hospital to launch his health care-focused tour is ironic considering McCain’s recent vote against expanding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. The expansion that McCain opposed would have extended coverage to a significant portion of Florida’s 658,000 uninsured children.
The expansion passed despite McCain’s protestations, but President Bush vetoed it in October, which McCain said was the “Right call by the president.” At the time, pediatricians around the country protested Bush’s veto, including doctors at Miami Children’s Hospital:
About 100 people—including pediatric residents, faculty members and community parents—gathered at the School of Medicine on Oct. 2 to protest President George Bush’s threatened veto of a bill that would reauthorize and expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Act, or SCHIP. […]
More than 30 institutions signed on to hold similar rallies, including Phoenix Children’s Hospital, Miami Children’s Hospital and Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C.
In his remarks today, the only reference McCain made to children’s health care was to to say that he supported “public health programs” to combat childhood obesity.
Is Dr. Coburn Blocking Legislation Funding Breast Cancer Research?
Is Dr. Coburn Blocking Legislation Funding Breast Cancer Research?
The Senate is currently considering the Breast Cancer and Environmental Research Act, legislation that would authorize $40 million per year over five years to fund research into the possible links between breast cancer and the environment. The proposal has over two-thirds support in the Senate.
But the bill’s passage has been stalled, as a senator placed a “hold” on it. Yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) released a statement announcing that a single Republican senator was blocking the bill. Reid called it “unconscionable” that one person would “singlehandedly block our ability to have a reasonable debate on a bill.”
It appears that this lone senator may be Dr. Tom Coburn (R-OK) — “an obstetrician who sees patients one morning a week.” Yesterday, when Reid brought the bill to the floor for a vote, Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ) “objected” on behalf of Coburn:
REID: Upon the disposition of all amendments…the Senate proceed to vote on the passage of the bill as amended.
WEBB: Is there an objection? Senator from Arizona.
KYL: Mr. President, on behalf of Sen. Coburn, there is an objection.
WEBB: Objection is heard.
Watch the floor exchange:
The evidence strongly suggests it was Coburn who placed the hold. In 2006, he put a hold on the same bill, claiming it “would take the authority for research out of the hands of scientists and put it into the hands of politicians.”
In March, the Senate Health, Education, and Labor Committee passed the breast cancer bill, overriding Coburn’s efforts to amend it. Coburn reportedly unleashed the “threat of 15 amendments” to alter the legislation.
Despite being an obstetrician, Coburn’s record on women’s rights and health care is abysmal and at times, even offensive. In 2005, he proclaimed that silicone breast implants “make you healthier.” When running for Senate in 2004, he suggested the death penalty for abortion doctors.
ThinkProgress contacted Coburn’s office multiple times but received no response.
Elizabeth Edwards responds to McCain’s ‘cheap shot.’
Elizabeth Edwards responds to McCain’s ‘cheap shot.’
Earlier this month, Elizabeth Edwards, who is now a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, criticized Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) health plan because it doesn’t guarantee coverage for people who have pre-existing conditions — like both Edwards and McCain. She also noted that McCain had benefited from government-run health care his whole life. On ABC’s This Week yesterday, McCain called Edwards’ criticism a “cheap shot.” Watch it:
Edwards responded to McCain today at The Wonk Room, saying her criticism was “not a cheap shot,” but rather “a potentially life and death question for tens of million of Americans. And it is a question Sen. McCain must address.”
Bush administration ‘violated federal law’ on children’s health care.
Bush administration ‘violated federal law’ on children’s health care.
A new Government Accountability Office opinion released yesterday finds that the Bush administration “violated federal law last year when it restricted states’ ability to provide health insurance to children of middle-income families, and its new policy is therefore unenforceable.” Twenty-two states already provide such coverage or want to do so, and several states have filed lawsuits challenging the Bush administration’s rules.