Online science has old science ethics

At least in medicine. The percentage of ghostwriting is as bad in Public Library of Science, held up as a model of open, collaborative online science publishing, as it is in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Mod Max Baucus strangles health ins public option

Mod Max Baucus and his Senate Finance Committee Gang of Six have put the finishing touches on gutting the public option on health insurance. And, if you expect a federal government alternatingly lead by neolib Dems and yahoo GOPers to actually regulate health insurance companies tightly enough to save us all money, I have some palm trees in Baucus' Montana to sell you, complete with lobbyist funding to buy them.

Beyond no public option, here’s what else is missing:
• Details of how the government will more tightly regulate health insurers, when the federal government doesn’t even have an office for that right now, and only the semi-toothless Federal Trade Commission to oversee advertising claims.
• Any plan to address fee-for-service doctor payments, which almost everybody agrees is a significant part of the problem.
• Guarantees that big insurers won’t be able to “game” the health-insurance coops that are being proposed as a VERY poor person’s substitute for the public option.

Meanwhile, at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, Team Obama continues its sellout to Big Pharma.

So relax, folks. You are going to get screwed; the astroturfers could have saved their Tea Party money; the lobbyist money worked just fine by itself.

Max Baucus feeds away at Big Medicine hog trough

And, no, folks, it’s not a pretty sight, especially not when the future of your healthcare is being bought and sold with Baucus getting 20 percent of the total cut. Yep, from 2003-08, Baucus, senator for a state of less than 1 million people, hauled in 20 percent of all healthcare-related political donations in the Senate.

That said, those lobbyists know their man — and their Senate:

“This is not an overwhelmingly liberal Congress, and it's certainly not a liberal Senate," said John Jonas, a Patton Boggs health-care lobbyist who has attended a Baucus fly-fishing event and other fundraisers. and whose clients include Bristol-Myers Squibb, Pfizer and Northwestern Mutual. “I think Max is uniquely situated to try to accomplish that, because he’s more of a centrist and moderate Democrat than others are.”

Naturally, Mod Max declined to be interviewed.

Take Obama-hospitals deal with grain of salt

The WaPost, with Ms. Health Insurance, Ceci Connolly, writing away trumpets an offer by hospitals of $155 billion in savings over a decade as offering hope to the 47 million, and counting, uninsured Americans.

But, the devilish details say most of this won’t help national healthcare:

Most of the savings — about $100 billion — would come through lower-than-expected Medicare and Medicaid payments to hospitals, said the two industry sources. About $40 billion would be saved by slowly reducing what hospitals get to care for the uninsured, they added. The reductions would probably not begin for several years, after a significant number of people have enrolled in the new insurance programs.

So, only 25 percent of the savings — if they all materialize — will help the uninsured.

I’m not arguing Medicare and Medicaid don’t need the help. Just that this is NOT a big deal for national healthcare. And, it’s not the $200 bil that Team Obama first said that hospitals could save. It’s a take-it-or-leave-it offer.

Beyond that, more than anything else, as with Big PhRMA’s $80 bil offer a week or so ago, this looks like a chance to buy off the idea of public option.

Where healthcare reform stands June 24

President Barack Obama vows that he “absolutely” will get healthcare reform done but refuses to discuss details.

Perhaps that’s because Ted Rall, who calls Obama a “militant moderate (like) Bill Clinton” says that what Obama has on the table will only insure about one-quarter of the uninsured, per Congressional Budget Office scoring of the Dodd-Kennedy plan. So far, The One has remained quiet on the Wyden alternative, which is disliked by big business (no surprise) and by the unions that have killed every real move toward national healthcare since Harry Truman.

(Many liberals and conservatives alike are ignorant of this simple fact. But, since World War II, unions have viewed their level of union-negotiated healthcare as a recruitment tool to get more workers. Well, with private-sector unionization pushing down toward the single-digit level, that’s obviously been a huge success).

In clear short-sightedness, unions don’t get that they would still be free to bargain for supplemental additional coverage, or other benefits, if we get single-payer national healthcare. Canada and Great Britain still have plenty of unions, don’t they?

Meanwhile, various medical-related lobbying groups, like the one for MRI operators, along with rural doctors and others, are starting to go into opposition over worries about reimbursements, etc.

Odds of comprehensive healthcare reform, including single payer, at this time? I’d say 60-40 against. Odds that major unions will, once again, dodge their deserved share of blame if we fail to get real healthcare reform? About 70-30 in favor.