Important Websites

• US Senate: http://www.senate.gov/
• Find your Representative: http://www.house.gov/
• http://thomas.loc.gov/
  Site for info about all Federal Legislation (Includes who voted for legislation and what has happened to it)
• http://www.govtrack.us/ Site that allows you to track a particular bill or type of bill in the US Congress.
• California State Legislators: Use phone book or go to these websites:
  Cal. State Legislature: http://www.legislature.ca.gov/
  Assembly: http://www.assembly.ca.gov/
  Senate: http://www.senate.ca
  .gov/
• Official Cal. Legislative Info
• Califonria Progress Report, http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/
• Center for Medicare Advocacy, http://www.medicareadvocacy
  .org/
• NCPSSM (National
  Committee to Preserve Social
  Security and Medicare)
• California Health Advocates (HICAP), Consumer help on
  Part D, http://www.cahealth
  advocates.org/
• Center for Medicare Services
  business site, govt. agency, http://www.cms.hhs.gov/
  Part D Site, http://www.medicare.
  gov/
• Medicare Rx Education network, http://www.medicarerxeducation.
  org/
• Consumers Union Part D site,
  https://secure.npsite.org/cu/site/
  Advocacy?page=UserAction
  Inactive& id=729
• Health Assistance Partnership
• Citizens Health Care Working
  Group
• California Disability Community
  Action Group
• Families USA Medicare Central
• Medicare Rights Center
• calmedicare.org
• National Senior Citizens Law
  Center

Our Partners in Advocacy:

• Gray Panther national org
• OWL
  (Older Women's League)
• CARA (California Alliance for
  Retired Americans)
• Health-Access
• CCS (Congress of California Seniors
• Pharmacists Planning Services Inc.(PPSI)
• California Health Advocates
  (HICAP)
• Cal. Pharmacists Assoc.

Gray Panther Sacto. Monthly Meetings: 2nd Tuesday ever y month, Hart Senior Center

Steering Committee Meetings:
4th Tuesday of every month, Hart
Senior Center

Officers
Temporary leaders: Margie Metzler, (916) 921-5008, margiemetz@hotmail.com; Arnie Godmintz, (916) 332-5980, arniegod@sbcglobal.net; Pat Naylor, (916) 391-6274, plnaylor@comcast.net
PO Box 19438
Sacramento, CA 95819
Web: www.gpcal.org
Lola Young, Treasurer
Dr. Karl Stoffers, Environment
Terry Terry, Disabled issues
Marge Cumming, Historian
Nell Ranta, Hospitality
Linda Roberts and Karen Raasch (CIDs), Housing issues
Nell Ranta, Labor/wage issues
Margie Metzler, Newsletter Editor
John Bernier, Newsletter Asst. Editor
Peter D'Anna, SS/Medicare Advisor
Richard Seyman, Dale Kooyman, Barbara Stanton, Transportation advisors
Edie Poole, Pat Naylor, and Jean Mellberg, Members at Large
Margie Metzler, Program Coordinator and Webmaster, www.gpcal.org

Gray Panthers California

Healthcare Reform Project

Note: this is our new page, devoted to single-payer healthcare issues!

Margie's Uninsured Blog

From presentation on Women's Equality Event and Reception, August 28: Healthcare issues

HCA June 6: Dr. Glennah Trochet Presentation PPT PDF

HCA June 6: Community Clinics, Dr. Abraham Daniels PPT PDF

New Drug/Pharmaceuticals Presentation

Yosemite Presentation

Chico presentation (PowerPoint) (PDF)

Lucerne presentation June 14 (More on history and myths)

OWL presentation (with Charlene Jones) June 21 2008 (Powerpoint) (PDF)

Our grant with the Wellness Foundation, California, has been extended for three years! As part of this grant, we have expanded our focus to all Healthcare Issues, including the Uninsured and Underinsured in America, discussions of the plans proposed in California for healthcare and other prescription drug and healthcare-related issues.

Here are our presentations as they have been given in the past months. Our presentations can be tailored to your needs.

• Train Wreck April 2008 Powerpoint PDF
• Medicare Part D Brochure (Train Wreck)
• Presentation to UAW: June 2007
• Generic Medicare Part D Presentation 2006
• Generic Medicare Part D Presentation 2007
• Train Wreck: Healthcare issues presentation 2008 (don't have PowerPoint? click here!) Handouts (PDF)
• Handout: Medicare Part D 2007
• Would you like a presentation? This letter describes it.

Want us to provide a presentation for your group? Call us,
(916) 921 -5008, or e-mail margiemetz@hotmail.com

Articles and Books

Insurance Companies

• Blue Cross letter to Physicians, Feb. 12, 2008 (Bee), plus editorial (Word) (PDF version)

Single-Payer/Healthcare General

• Angell, Marcia, MD: The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About it. Random House Trade Paperbooks, 2005
• Bartlett, Donald L. and Steele, James B.: Critical Condition: How Health Care in America Became Big Business—and Bad Medicine. Broadway Books, 2004.
• Cohn, Jonathan: Sick: The Untold Story of America’s Health Care Crisis—And the People Who Pay the Price. Harper Collins, 2007.
• Daschle, Tom, Senator: Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis. Thomas Dunne Books, 2008.
• Himmelstein, David, MD, Woolhandler, Steffie, MD., with Hellander, MD: Bleeding the Patient: The Consequences of Corporate Health Care. Common Courage Press, 2001.
• LeBow, Robert H., MD: Health Care Meltdown: Confronting the Myths and Fixing Our Failing System. Alan C. Hood & Co., 2003.
• Mahar, Maggie: Money-Driven Medicine, The Real Reason Health Care Costs so Much, Collins, 2006.
• Quadagno, Jill: One Nation, Uninsured: Why the US Has No National Health Insurance. Oxford University Press, 2005.
• Reid, T.R., The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care. The Penguin Press, 2009.
  
• The American Prospect, May 2008. Special Report: The Path to Universal Healthcare.
  • Borrowing Ill Health
    http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=borrowing_ill_health
    Hospitals are getting more aggressive about sending debt collectors after under-insured consumers.
    TAMARA DRAUT | April 21, 2008
  • Health Reform You Shouldn't Believe In
    http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=health_reform_you_shouldnt_believe_in
    What the Massachusetts experiment teaches us about incremental efforts to increase coverage by expanding private insurance.
    MARCIA ANGELL | April 21, 2008
  • Lessons From California
    http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=lessons_from_california
    The Schwarzenegger plan was a near miss, but well worth the trouble. The stage is set for the next effort.
    ANTHONY WRIGHT | April 21, 2008
  • The Elusive Politics of Reform
    http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_elusive_politics_of_reform
    Once again, a new administration and Congress will try to bring us universal health insurance. This time, despite urgent cost pressures, will they do it right?
    EZRA KLEIN | April 21, 2008
  • The Primacy of Prevention
    http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_primacy_of_prevention
    Addressing the whole range of behaviors that affect health is the key to a healthier society. This requires a universal health care system.
    NEAL HALFON | April 21, 2008
  • What Path to Universal Coverage?
    http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=what_path_to_universal_coverage
    The next administration will expand health coverage. Will they fix what is broken -- or just inflate costs?
    ROBERT KUTTNER | April 21, 2008
  • What Really Ails Medicare
    http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=what_really_ails_medicare
    The cost crisis of Medicare gets a lot of attention. The program can be fixed only by universalizing the larger health system in which Medicare resides.
    JONATHAN COHN | April 21, 2008
  • Why Not Connecticut?
    http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=why_not_connecticut
    A model grassroots organizing campaign mobilizes public opinion for universal coverage in a state long dominated by private insurers.
    MARC CAPLAN | April 21, 2008
• Himmelstein and Woolhandler, Harvards Med. School: The High Costs of for-Profit Medical Care
• Himmelstein and Woolhandler: Massachusetts' Mistake
• Mass Health Plan: Failing Grade: Himmelstein and Woolhandler
• Paying For National Health Insurance—And Not Getting It
  Steffie Woolhandler and David U. Himmelstein
• I Am Not a Health Reform
  By DAVID U. HIMMELSTEIN and STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER
  

• Sheila Kuehl's Letter re LAO report on spending. Jun 2008
• Legislative page: http://info.sen.ca.gov/cgi-bin/postquery?bill_number=sb_840&sess=CUR&house=B&site=sen
• Sheila Kuehl's letter of September 10, 2007

Health Care Systems – the Four Basic Models

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/countries/models.html

An excerpt from correspondent T.R. Reid's book on international health care, titled We're Number 37!, referring to the U.S.'s ranking in the World Health Organization 2000 World Health Report. The book is scheduled to be published by Penguin Press in early 2009.
There are about 200 countries on our planet, and each country devises its own set of arrangements for meeting the three basic goals of a health care system: keeping people healthy, treating the sick, and protecting families against financial ruin from medical bills.

But we don't have to study 200 different systems to get a picture of how other countries manage health care. For all the local variations, health care systems tend to follow general patterns. There are four basic systems:

The Beveridge Model
Named after William Beveridge, the daring social reformer who designed Britain's National Health Service. In this system, health care is provided and financed by the government through tax payments, just like the police force or the public library.

Many, but not all, hospitals and clinics are owned by the government; some doctors are government employees, but there are also private doctors who collect their fees from the government. In Britain, you never get a doctor bill. These systems tend to have low costs per capita, because the government, as the sole payer, controls what doctors can do and what they can charge.

Countries using the Beveridge plan or variations on it include its birthplace Great Britain, Spain, most of Scandinavia and New Zealand. Hong Kong still has its own Beveridge-style health care, because the populace simply refused to give it up when the Chinese took over that former British colony in 1997. Cuba represents the extreme application of the Beveridge approach; it is probably the world's purest example of total government control.

The Bismarck Model
Named for the Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who invented the welfare state as part of the unification of Germany in the 19th century. Despite its European heritage, this system of providing health care would look fairly familiar to Americans. It uses an insurance system -- the insurers are called "sickness funds" -- usually financed jointly by employers and employees through payroll deduction.

Unlike the U.S. insurance industry, though, Bismarck-type health insurance plans have to cover everybody, and they don't make a profit. Doctors and hospitals tend to be private in Bismarck countries; Japan has more private hospitals than the U.S. Although this is a multi-payer model -- Germany has about 240 different funds -- tight regulation gives government much of the cost-control clout that the single-payer Beveridge Model provides.

The Bismarck model is found in Germany, of course, and France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Japan, Switzerland, and, to a degree, in Latin America.

The National Health Insurance Model
This system has elements of both Beveridge and Bismarck. It uses private-sector providers, but payment comes from a government-run insurance program that every citizen pays into. Since there's no need for marketing, no financial motive to deny claims and no profit, these universal insurance programs tend to be cheaper and much simpler administratively than American-style for-profit insurance.

The single payer tends to have considerable market power to negotiate for lower prices; Canada's system, for example, has negotiated such low prices from pharmaceutical companies that Americans have spurned their own drug stores to buy pills north of the border. National Health Insurance plans also control costs by limiting the medical services they will pay for, or by making patients wait to be treated.

The classic NHI system is found in Canada, but some newly industrialized countries -- Taiwan and South Korea, for example -- have also adopted the NHI model.

The Out-of-Pocket Model
Only the developed, industrialized countries -- perhaps 40 of the world's 200 countries -- have established health care systems. Most of the nations on the planet are too poor and too disorganized to provide any kind of mass medical care. The basic rule in such countries is that the rich get medical care; the poor stay sick or die.

In rural regions of Africa, India, China and South America, hundreds of millions of people go their whole lives without ever seeing a doctor. They may have access, though, to a village healer using home-brewed remedies that may or not be effective against disease.

In the poor world, patients can sometimes scratch together enough money to pay a doctor bill; otherwise, they pay in potatoes or goat's milk or child care or whatever else they may have to give. If they have nothing, they don't get medical care.

These four models should be fairly easy for Americans to understand because we have elements of all of them in our fragmented national health care apparatus. When it comes to treating veterans, we're Britain or Cuba. For Americans over the age of 65 on Medicare, we're Canada. For working Americans who get insurance on the job, we're Germany.

For the 15 percent of the population who have no health insurance, the United States is Cambodia or Burkina Faso or rural India, with access to a doctor available if you can pay the bill out-of-pocket at the time of treatment or if you're sick enough to be admitted to the emergency ward at the public hospital.

The United States is unlike every other country because it maintains so many separate systems for separate classes of people. All the other countries have settled on one model for everybody. This is much simpler than the U.S. system; it's fairer and cheaper, too.

• Provider Report Card: http://www.opa.ca.gov/report_card/ (Office of the Patient Advocate)
• Field Poll on Californians' views on healthcare, August 22, 2007: "The findings show that a growing majority of voters (69%) express dissatisfaction with the way the health care system is working in California. Yet, by a five to three margin (58% to 36%) voters in this state feel it is unlikely that the governor and legislature will be successful in passing significant health reform this year.
  At the same time, there has been a shift in voter preferences as to how best to reform the state's health care system. Last December, a 52% majority of voters supported the idea of making reforms to the health care system within the framework of the current health insurance system by sharing responsibilities among employers, government and business. Now, just 33% favor this alternative. On the other hand, there is growing support for the idea of replacing the current system with a new state government-run system that would cover all Californians. Statewide, 36% of voters now favor this approach, up from 24% who felt this way nine months ago.
  There is a direct relationship between voters' growing dissatisfaction with the health care system and the increase in support for creating a government-run system, as voters "very dissatisfied" with the way the health care system is functioning are more likely than others to support a government-run system."
• Means Testing, Medicare Part B
• Scaling Back Changes to Medicare Payments, NY Times Aug. 3 2006 (follow-up to
  Bush Administration Plans Medicare Changes )
• CalPIRG Articles:
  Health Care Reform: Good for Our Health, Good for the Budget 1/14/2008
  Facing a projected $14 billion budget shortfall, California lawmakers are right to consider how the landmark health care reform bill, ABX1-1, will affect the deficit. But ABX1-1 brings in new money for health care that could not be used to plug the gap in the general fund, as well as limiting health care costs moving forward.
  CALPIRG Recommendations to Governor Schwarzenegger for 2008 1/08/2008
  In anticipation of Governor Schwarzenegger’s State of the State Address this afternoon, CALPIRG advocates made their own policy recommendations to the governor on critical issues facing the state of California in 2008, including health care, privatization of public assets, mortgage lending reforms, and balancing the state budget.
  
  Health Care Reform: Good for Our Health, Good for the Budget, 1/14/2008
  Much-Needed Health Care Reform Headed for a Vote, 12/14/2007
  CALPIRG Members Speak Out on Health Care, 11/09/2007
  CALPIRG Statement on Democrats' Health Care Reform Compromise Plan, 11/07/2007
  CALPIRG Statement on Assembly Health Committee Hearing on Governor's Health Care Reform Proposal
  

Get Help!

• Provider Report Card: http://www.opa.ca.gov/report_card/ (Office of the Patient Advocate)
• California Department of Managed Health Care's HMO Help Center: FTB Court, off Mayhew, Sacramento, CA. 1-888-HMO-2219; TDD: 1-877-688-9891; fax: 916-255-5241; www.hmohelp.ca.gov
• Medicare Rights Center: http://www.medicarerights.org/

Organizations

General Information

• Phone list (Media in California)
• Half-page Phone List (for calling talk shows..)
• State Legislation in 2006 (CARA)
• Labor's Legislative Scorecard 2005
• Krugman: the Class Wars (Oct. 2002)
• CALPIRG Article: New Survey Shows Uninsured Americans Pay 60 Percent
  more for Prescription Drugs (July 06)
• Gray Panthers California wins a grant from the California Wellness Foundation
  (http://www.tcwf.org)
• What are we doing about this mess?
• How can you help?
• Upcoming Gray Panthers Meetings
• Cartoon (or go to our Cartoon Page...)
• Download our Documents

In 2005, Gray Panthers of California won a grant from the California Wellness Foundation for advocating and various training and development activities regarding the mess known as Medicare Part D. Activities included the following:
• Attend CMS, HICAP and State of California official meetings
• Provide outreach and training to organizations whose members are affected by Part D
• Create and develop educational and advocacy materials
• Get stories from people adversely affected by Part D
• Keep a project database
• Attend meetings, hearings, advocacy sessions etc.
• Encourage others to become activists and advocates!

In July of 2007, our Grant was extended for three years, and expanded to include other importatnt helathcare issues.

Let me know if you'd like to join us! (or call 916-921-5008).

What are we doing about this mess?

• Website
• Create informational materials
• Meet with anyone who will listen

• Form coalitions with other senior groups: other Gray Panther groups, OWL
(Older Women's League) , CARA (California Alliance for Retired Americans),
Health-Access, CCS (Congress of Califonria Seniors), NCPSSM (National
Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare), etc.
• Form Coalitions with other activist groups
• Form Coalitions with Pharmacist groups (Pharmacists Planning Services,
Inc., PPSI)
• Attend meetings of all sorts
• Write, call, talk, e-mail, etc.
• Donut Postcards
• Collect horror stories

How Can You Help?

• Write, call, talk, e-mail, etc.
• Send postcards, letters, etc.
• Letters to the Editor
• Letters to Legislators (Federal and State)
• Tell us your horror stories
• Testify in Congress, in writing, in the Capitol
• Give us more ideas!

Contact Information