Poorer nations push for universal health coverage as U.S. squabbles
Posted June 14, 2012, at 4:34 p.m.
A few weeks ago, an article by Noam Levey of the Los Angeles Times caught my eye. It was titled “Global Push to Guarantee Health Coverage Leaves U.S. Behind” and it described how “even as Americans debate whether to scrap President Obama’s health care law and its promise of guaranteed health coverage, many far less affluent nations are moving in the opposite direction — to provide medical insurance to all citizens.”
Among those other countries are China, Thailand, Mexico, Rwanda and Ghana. The article went on to explain that, “Two decades ago, many former communist countries in Eastern Europe and elsewhere dismantled their universal health care systems amid a drive to set up free-market economies. But popular demand for insurance protection has fueled an effort in nearly all of these countries to rebuild their systems. Similar pressure is coming from the citizens of fast-growing nations in Asia and Latin America, where rising living standards have raised expectations for better services.”
Many other countries are moving full speed ahead to guarantee health care for all their citizens, not only because it is morally and ethically right but because it is a powerful economic development tool that will ensure these countries have healthy populations and an efficient and effective health care system.
Meanwhile, the U.S. seems stuck in a state of political paralysis and may soon move full speed astern. What explains this striking and unfortunate example of American exceptionalism?
For Some Druggists, Medicaid Changes Mean Pain
By BECCA AARONSON
Not long after the state rolled pharmacies into Medicaid managed care in March — an effort to save tens of millions of dollars a year — Ronald Barrett noticed something unusual at his store, Oak Cliff Pharmacy in southern Dallas. When he entered a child’s prescription into his computer to see how much he would be reimbursed by CVS Caremark, the managed care plan’s pharmacy benefit manager, he got an error message. A phone call indicated that the prescription had already been filled, at a CVS pharmacy down the road.
“I asked the child’s mother, ‘Did you have the prescriptions sent over there?’ And she said, ‘No, I don’t even go over there,’ ” said Mr. Barrett, most of whose customers are covered by Medicaid, the state and federal health plan for the disabled and poor. “We called the prescriber, and they said they didn’t know how they got over there either.”
Another pharmacist, in Harlingen, received a fax from a health plan managed by CVS Caremark rejecting a claim for diabetic test strips with the message, “Please route patient to a CVS pharmacy.”
Such stories have fueled suspicions among independent pharmacies that CVS Caremark is capitalizing on Medicaid changes to expand its retail business at the expense of locally owned pharmacies.
With Justices Set to Rule on Health Law, 2 Parties Strategize
By JONATHAN WEISMAN and MICHAEL D. SHEAR
WASHINGTON — House Republicans are not waiting for the Supreme Court verdict on the new health care law to plot their strategic response. If the measure is not thrown out entirely, House leaders plan to force a vote immediately to repeal the law to reinforce their deep opposition to the legislation, opposition that has become central to their political identity.
The emerging game plan for the Republicans who control the House is just one element of the coordinated planning by groups on both sides of the issue as the Supreme Court ruling approaches as early as next week. The Republican National Committee, in consultation with Congressional campaign offices and Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, is readying a war room. The National Republican Congressional Campaign has mounted a petition drive for repeal, complete with a function to allow signers to watch their faxed petitions arrive over the Internet.
At the White House, which has much riding on the case, top officials continue to project confidence that the court will rule in its favor and that the administration will move on to put the law into force. But White House allies and advocates of the new law do not necessarily share that view and are gearing up in the event of an unfavorable decision.
Representatives of groups favoring the law from crucial political battlegrounds converged on Washington this week for two days of meetings to coordinate their political response at the behest ofFamilies USA, one of the law’s most stalwart defenders. Democratic aides on Capitol Hill are readying a comeback intended to force Republicans to show their hand on the issue of the uninsured.
House Democrats have been issued a “pocket card” to carry with them, spelling out in big numbers how the law has already helped people: 86 million who have received free preventive care, 105 million who no longer face a lifetime cap on benefits, and as many as 17 million children who can no longer be denied coverage because of pre-existing health conditions.
And the health insurance industry has started a lobbying and social media effort to drive home its contention that popular regulatory provisions in the law cannot survive if the Supreme Court strikes down the mandate that all Americans buy health insurance.
Another View: Cloud of cynicism hangs over Supreme Court
A poll shows the public believes justices will let personal beliefs affect their rulings.
St. Louis Post Dispatch
In his dissent to the Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore, the case that effectively awarded the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush, Justice John Paul Stevens made a prediction that now appears to have come true:
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