Lobbyists united to sabotage health care reform

The voice of opposition to health care reform is getting louder, noisier, and more deceptive in the Capitol Hill. Politicians are more concerned about preserving the profit margins of the health insurance companies than reducing the cost and improving the quality and outcome of health care.

At the center of the issue is whether a public insurance plan (public option) should be offered to compete with private insurance plans. Politicians supported by big health care businesses are fighting tooth to nail to thwart a public option, which is absolutely essential for implementing needed reform to reduce health care cost and improve quality over long run. Instead of offering a coherent opposition to public option, which is supported by 70% of Americans according to some surveys, these politicians are actually focusing their opposition to the estimated high cost of providing universal health insurance to cover the uninsured. This is a very smart tactics, because the public at large is very concerned about the ballooning federal budget deficit.

But focusing on the cost is really misleading. Regardless we have HC reform or not, this cost remains the same as long as we have to cover the roughly 45 million uninsured. In fact the cost will continue to rise if we do NOT reform the current system. The cost is NOT due to reform. The cost is precisely the reason we need reform.

Public option is absolutely critical to health care reform. Without it, how can we implement the badly needed changes to the entire reimbursement system, which is at the core of the problems of our health care system. Private insurance companies have never implemented any reform. What they are mostly concerned about is not the fairness and effectiveness of the HC system, but the profitability of their business. That is understandable. That is why we need a public plan to promote reform, provide standards, and guide the benefit design and reimbursement to better align payment/profit with clinical outcome.

I have been reading google news Health section. Google rank news based on how many people read the news. I have not seen any news items appeared in Google's Health section in the past two weeks when HC Reform was the hottest topic in DC. People simply are not paying attention! That gives the lobbyists a huge chance to thwart HC reform.

I am very pessimistic about HC reform. American public is just too stupid and ill-informed to understand how critical the reform is to their quality of life and that of their children's. They are not paying attention. They give such an important issue to the hands of the lobbyists.

This is how democracy works.

An Iranian Revolution? Hardly.

Protest in Iran's capital city Tehran against the alleged voting fraud has captured people's imagination in the west. Is this the beginning of a "green revolution"? I think this is just a wishful thinking on our part. The fact of the matter is there isn't a revolution. Hardly.

1) Protests are isolated and small in scale. It has not spread beyond the elite city Tehran. Iran has over 70M in population, and 85% of them participated in the election on June 12. If there is widespread vote fraud, you would have seen a much more widespread demonstration in different places. But so far, we have only seen it in the capital city Tehran, mainly among the elites and college students. The vast rural population has not joined the protest.

2) Was there really vote fraud? According to pre-election polls, Washington Post reported that Ahmadinejad was way ahead, by a margin of 20% or 2 to 1, in most of the precincts. The election result should not be a surprise at all.

I am still puzzled by why western media were so quick to take side in this dispute over election result. I hardly see Mousavi much different from Ahmadinejad in terms of nuclear policy or policy towards Israel. The media did not take side last year in the Mexican election dispute. Why this time?

Honestly, I think Iran has the best democracy among the countries in middle east. That does not mean it would necessarily result in a friendlier foreign policy to the west.

Gearing up a fight for Health Care Reform

Obama today delivered a speech to AMA (American Medical Association) on Health Care Reform. Over the last few months, the large interest groups are intensifying their opposition to HC Reform, centered around the public health insurance plan proposed by Obama. They resort to the old tactics of misleading advertisement. They tried to label the public health plan as government controlled HC. But what is the alternative that they propose? Just give individuals subsidies to purchase private health insurance. Is that reform? No they just want status quo.

But the country cannot afford not to have a true reform. The current system is broken. Maintaining status quo is NOT an option. Private insurance plans have failed to deliver any menaingful reform, or produce better patient outcomes. In fact, under the current system, patients get more treatments without having better clinical outcomes. US spends as much as three times per person on healthcare than other developed nations, yet delivering below-average clinical outcomes.

We have to change the system. Private insurance plans have failed. So there have to be something alternative. A public plan can help guide a better medical payment system that aligns physician and hospital reimbrusement with patient outcome, the so called pay-for-performance concept.

Without a public plan, health care reform is DEAD. Status quo wins, and the nation is going to the road of bankruptcy. Under the current system, Medicare Part A program alone has an obligation with net present value exceeding 100 trillion dollars! The system is completely broken. It must be fixed!

The fiscal problem is NOT the 1.75 trillion dollar budget deficit projected for 2009. The fiscal problem is how can we sustain the current spending trajectory of healthcare expense, not only for Medicare, but the nation as a whole.

Obama speech in Cairo

I just finished watching Obama's address to the Muslim nations titled "a new beginning" which he gave in Cairon on June 4th of 2009. In the speech he talked about six issues: violent extremism (instead of the word "terrorism"), conflicts between the Israelis and the Palestinians and the Arab world, nuclear weapon, democracy, religious freedom, and women's rights.

I found myself nodding all through his speech. He articulated what I believe in, only much better than what I can ever express in words. I think most of the progressive Christians hold similar views on those issues Obama talked about. Finally, we have a leader who is rational, reasonable, smart, and wise. The problem is that the evil forces in the world are very strong. Can Obama's vision be realized?

I certainly hope that many will be inspired by his vision and work hard to make it a reality around the world.

I really wish him the best of luck, and may God bless him and make him succeed and prosper in whatever he does.

Every Christians should pray really hard for President Obama that he have the strength wisdom and help from God to carry out his vision.