Arkansas Blog

TPM Has the letter Brummett mentions. (clicky)

For Blue Dogs to want rural Doctors to receive the same pay as doctors in much higher cost urban settings is simply obstructionist. To want to raise doctors pay at all, when we are by far the most expensive in the world is absurd. Let's get the Pharma and other profiteering sales reps out of our doctors lives... let's kill off the private insurance billing monster, let's kill off the need for doctors to have to call private insurance for approval of each step step of your care all along the way. Then let's see how productive doctors are with all the free time to conduct an honest days work.

For Blue Dogs to complain about Medicare billing, which is ten times more efficient... and could/ should be even more efficient if they would quit catering to the convoluted nature of anti health care private insurance companies billing systems. .. it's simply obstructionist once again.

These Blue Dogs are not fiscally conservative, not in the least. Quite the opposite.

http://www.commonwealthfund.org/Content/Publications/Fund-Reports/2009/Jun/Fork-in-the-Road.aspx

Health reform with a public option that pays Medicare rates (like the House plan) will save the average family over $2000 a year

>>But Ross is nothing if not savvy to his constituents' conservatism. Across southern Arkansas he is hearing uncommon anger about deficits, bailouts and this "socialism" nonsense getting fomented by the right wing.<<
JB

In my limited understanding of Southern Arkansas I bet Ross is in contact with a very narrow band of constituents. I would further bet that if the vast majority of voters in his District 4 had a real idea of what this meant to them they would support it. Not the mill owners and AMA groups to whom he answers but the rank and file voters. I would further bet there is not a newspaper serving his district which has the least bit of interest in the readers understanding the issue.

I bet District 4 is ripe for a real populist. Such a candidate would not favor gun control, gays, nor abortion but they would favor other progressive measures.

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Wood, you be correct--yes, Ross (as well as Berry) are led by a very small number of constituents. They run scared by the vocal minority and let fear cloud common sense in too many, but not all, circumstances. On controversial issues, particularly religious and farm subsidy ones, they are lost to the loud and, to them, scary few. Their claims will only get them so far, and in the health realm, with increasing public interest, such claims are being outed as uninformed assertions, so they and the other blupie dogs will have to have more evidence. Because they claim they are conservative fiscally, a cover-up on this issue, they need to have calculated how much money is currently spent on healthcare. Restructuring in a logical way would actually be able to provide bigger bucks for medical providers, get everyone covered, andprovide a likely savings for general revenues. Billions are spent on research, education, paperwork, lobbyist tricks, outdated laws, treatment, etc. The focus has moved too much toward money, money, money and less toward patients. Ross and Berry, show us the amount spent now on all levels of healthcare, and what you disagree with, and at least provide the specifics for your assertions.