By Emma Curchin, Brandon Novick and Peter Hart | –

( Commondreams.org ) – The quasi-privatized system called “Medicare Advantage,” otherwise known as Part C, was created in 2003 as a means of expanding the role of private sector corporations in the publicly-funded Medicare system. Proponents claimed it would lower costs and improve health care for seniors. It has achieved neither of those goals; instead, MA has become a wildly profitable scheme for private insurance giants, who have become adept at taking advantage of Medicare’s billing model to claim exorbitant profits. At this point, MA is more profitable for many companies than their conventional insurance businesses.

And the program continues to grow. Medicare Advantage now has more enrollees than traditional Medicare, thanks in no small part to aggressive public relations campaigns that sell seniors on the idea that the plans cut costs and increase choice. Congress has simultaneously failed to plug the holes in traditional Medicare, pushing seniors towards MA to avoid high out-of-pocket costs. Policymakers can fill these gaps and guarantee true comprehensive coverage simply by redirecting the overpayments to MA insurers into Medicare.

Numerous studies and media investigations have documented the problems with Medicare Advantage. What follows is a collection of some of the most notable figures documenting the high costs of this failed experiment in privatizing Medicare.

$88-$140 billion
The amount that the federal government overpaid private insurers under Medicare Advantage in 2022, according to the Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP).

$612 billion
The amount that Medicare Advantage plans overcharged the federal government due to upcoding and favorable selection between 2007 and 2023, according to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), an independent congressional agency established to advise Congress on issues affecting the Medicare program.

$600 billion
According to one study, this is the projected excess spending between 2023 to 2031 due to the ways that Medicare Advantage plans use ‘upcoding,’ the process of classifying beneficiaries as being sicker than they really are in order to increase payments.

$35 billion
The amount that MedPAC estimates taxpayers will overpay MA insurers this year through ‘favorable selection,’ the practice of targeting healthy seniors for their plans.

$4.2 billion
The amount that MA insurers received for questionable home visit health risk assessments (and related chart reviews) in 2023, according to an October 2024 report from the Department of Health and Human Services.

80 percent
The percentage of mental health providers in a sample of MA plans that were determined to be “ghosts” (meaning they were unreachable, not accepting new patients, or not in-network), according to a recent Senate investigation.

1.8 million
Estimated number of Medicare Advantage customers whose health plans will be canceled in 2025.

167 percent
The amount that drug deductibles will increase for roughly two-thirds of all Medicare Advantage enrollees next year.

55.7 percent
The increase in MA care denials from 2022 to 2023, according to research from the American Hospital Association.

Image by Darko Stojanovic from Pixabay

54 percent
The increase in the denial rate for long-term acute care hospitals in Humana’s Medicare Advantage plans from 2020 to 2022 (Senate Majority Staff Report, 10/17/24).

$660 million
The amount of taxpayer money that CVS/Aetna stashed away in 2018 by denying Medicare Advantage patients’ claims for treatment at inpatient facilities (Senate Majority Staff Report).

78 percent
The percentage of physicians in a 2023 American Medical Association survey who said that Medicare Advantage’s prior authorization processes caused a recommended treatment for a patient to be abandoned.

$6 billion
One estimate of the amount spent in 2022 on the marketing companies that work to attract new subscribers in Medicare Advantage plans.

556,068
The number of English-language TV commercials touting Medicare Advantage that aired during the seven-week open enrollment period in 2022.

$50 billion
The amount that the Wall Street Journal estimates private insurers received between 2018 and 2021 for “hundreds of thousands of questionable diagnoses that triggered extra taxpayer-funded payments.”

$2,329
The amount that MA insurers receive per beneficiary above the estimated costs of Medicare.

$1,730
The gross profit margin posted by MA companies in 2021 – more than double their profit margin on the individual market.

$172 million
The amount that Cigna agreed to pay in 2023 to “resolve allegations that it knowingly submitted and failed to withdraw inaccurate and untruthful diagnosis codes for its Medicare Advantage Plan enrollees to increase its payments from Medicare.” The Justice Department continues to investigate similar allegations involving other MA providers.

Emma Curchin

Brandon Novick

Peter Hart

A report published by the United Nations Commission regarded Israel’s attacks on Gaza’s health facilities as war crimes and crimes against humanity. Chair of the UN Commission, Navi Pillay, stated: “By targeting healthcare facilities, Israel is targeting the right to health itself, with significant long-term detrimental effects on the civilian population. Children in particular have borne the brunt of these attacks, suffering both directly and indirectly from the collapse of the health system.”

Moreover, Israel’s assault on the Palestinian healthcare sector has been unparalleled in its inhumanity. An analysis by the charity Save the Children, covering the period from October 7, 2023, to early April 2024, showed that the rate of Israeli attacks on healthcare in Gaza is higher than in any other conflict worldwide since 2018. According to Save the Children, on average, Israel carried out 73 attacks per month on Palestinian healthcare facilities. Ukraine followed with 67 attacks per month, while the Democratic Republic of Congo averaged 11 attacks per month.

As part of Israel’s strategy to destroy the health sector, it has also targeted healthcare staff. For example, last May, Dr. Adnan Al Bursh, head of the orthopedic department at Al-Shifa Hospital, was reportedly abducted by the Israeli army and tortured to death. After one year of the Israeli war on Gaza, an estimated 986 Palestinian healthcare personnel were killed by Israel, along with 85 civil defense workers. Al Jazeera indicated that 34 hospitals and 80 health centers became inoperative, in addition to the destruction of 131 ambulances.

International healthcare staff in Gaza do not feel safe from Israeli attacks either. For instance, in the previously mentioned Save the Children report, Dr. Simon Struthers, a pediatrician at a field hospital in Rafah, stated: “We can’t take risks and must be careful which route we take because of what’s going on. We’re fearful of what’s coming from Israeli forces, rather than the local population, who are very supportive of us.”

Human Rights Watch (HRW) argued last year that the Israeli military’s persistent and seemingly illegal assaults on healthcare facilities, staff, and transportation were further dismantling Gaza’s medical infrastructure and said that they should be examined as potential war crimes. The HRW quotes special adviser on Palestinian health A. Kayum Ahmed: “Israel’s repeated attacks damaging hospitals and harming healthcare workers, already hard hit by an unlawful blockade, have devastated Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure. The strikes on hospitals have killed hundreds of people and put many patients at grave risk because they’re unable to receive proper medical care.”

Sadly, many Palestinians may have died from natural causes and diseases such as cancer, diabetes or other treatable conditions, whose lives might have been saved if not for Israel’s destruction of Palestinian hospitals. These victims are not counted among those who died due to direct Israeli fire, though their deaths can still be attributed to the conditions created by the occupation and blockade. Even in times of ceasefire, Palestinians will continue to die unnecessarily as it will take time for the Palestinian healthcare sector to recover to its previous state—which was already severely under-resourced due to Israel’s longstanding blockade on Gaza.

You may think that the circumstances of the Gaza War explain this attack on Palestinian healthcare. In fact, the targeting of healthcare facilities is not a new tactic in Israel’s conflict with the Palestinian people. According to a 2017 report issued by the charity Medical Aid for Palestine, 147 hospitals and clinics, along with 80 ambulances, were either damaged or destroyed in Israeli military offensives on Gaza between 2008 and 2017. Additionally, 145 medical staff, most of them ambulance drivers, were either injured or killed. In the West Bank, between October and December 2015, there were eight armed Israeli raids on Palestinian hospitals. The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) documented 92 instances of damage to ambulances and 147 injuries to medical workers.

Considering the scale and history of attacks on the health sector and the targeting of Palestinian healthcare personnel by Israel, along with the failure of governments and the international community to hold Israel accountable — often appearing complicit — healthcare professionals and their representative bodies across the world should show solidarity with their colleagues in occupied Palestine. Healthcare organizations should also express their support by boycotting healthcare products produced in Israel and its illegal settlements before it is too late.

—

Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

Al Jazeera English: “Israel shells Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza”

“Our private, profit-driven system means that we are paying more for less,” said one progressive activist.

Jake Johnson

( Commondreams ) – A report out Thursday shows that the United States’ for-profit healthcare system still ranks dead last among peer nations on key metrics, including access to care and health outcomes such as life expectancy at birth.

The new analysis from the Commonwealth Fund is the latest indictment of a corporate-dominated system that leaves tens of millions of people uninsured or underinsured and unable to afford life-saving medications without rationing doses or going into debt.

“Despite spending a lot on healthcare, the United States is not meeting one of the principal obligations of a nation: to protect the health and welfare of its residents,” the report states. “Most of the countries we compared are providing this protection, even though each can learn a good deal from its peers. The U.S., in failing this ultimate test of a successful nation, remains an outlier.”

People in the U.S., which spends roughly twice as much per capita on healthcare as other rich nations, “live the shortest lives and have the most avoidable deaths,” Commonwealth noted, pointing to frequent “denials of services by insurance companies” and other systematic defects of the American system, including massive administrative costs.

Image by Stefan Schranz from Pixabay

Meanwhile, insurance giants and pharmaceutical companies are raking in huge profits, benefiting in particular from the growing privatization of Medicare. More than half of the Medicare-eligible population in the U.S. is currently on a privately run Medicare Advantage plan.

“Our private, profit-driven system means that we are paying more for less,” progressive activist Jonathan Cohn wrote in response to the Commonwealth report.

The Commonwealth Fund’s findings bolster progressives’ case for transitioning to a Medicare for All system that would provide comprehensive coverage to everyone in the country for free at the point of service. Studies have repeatedly shown that such a program would cost less than the immensely wasteful for-profit system—which is set to drive national healthcare spending to $7.7 trillion per year by 2032—while saving lives.

Commonwealth observed Thursday that while affordability “is a pervasive problem” in the U.S., Australia “offers free care in all public hospitals, and the nation’s universal Medicare system provides all Australians with coverage for all or part of the cost of [general practitioners] and specialist consultations and diagnostic tests, with additional subsidies available for private hospital care.”

“The U.S. continues to be in a class by itself in the underperformance of its healthcare sector,” the report continues. “While the other nine countries differ in the details of their systems and in their performance on domains, unlike the U.S., they all have found a way to meet their residents’ most basic health care needs, including universal coverage.”

With the U.S. presidential election less than two months away, neither 2024 candidate for the two major parties has outlined a detailed healthcare proposal thus far.

Former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, said during last week’s debate in Philadelphia that he merely has “the concepts of a plan,” while Harris—who once co-sponsored Medicare for All legislation in the Senate—said she “absolutely” supports “private healthcare options” and wants to “maintain and grow the Affordable Care Act.”

Just days after the debate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio)—Trump’s running mate—said the Republican nominee prefers a system in which “a young American” and a “65-year-old American with a chronic condition” are not placed in “the same risk pools,” suggesting a rollback of the ACA’s protections for people with preexisting conditions.

“You can’t really say people with preexisting conditions are protected if they are in a separate insurance risk pool and can be charged exorbitant premiums,” Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at the research group KFF, wrote in response to Vance’s comments.

Via Commondreams

Licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Others among the victims of Monday’s bombardments were innocent male noncombatants, though note that the genocidal discourse in Israel alleges that there are no innocent Palestinians. The Israeli military is likely counting as Hamas militants all the able bodied males killed. As this carnage has become daily and routine, it has ceased being reported as significant news. As far as I can tell, US cable news simply ignores Gaza most of the time, with rare exceptions.

Although we concentrate on the estimate of at least 41,226 people killed in Gaza by Israeli bombs (and this is a gross underestimate) we often forget about the 95,413 wounded.

The World Health Organization estimates that 25% of of the wounded have undergone severe trauma (loss of limbs, severe burns, etc.) and require rehabilitative health care. That is, their injuries are life-changing.

TRT World Now: “WHO: 22,500 wounded Palestinians require long-term rehabilitation”

The estimate is based on records from Emergency Medical Teams on the ground in Gaza in the first half of this year

Injuries to major extremities — feet and hands — constitute a significant proportion of these injuries. WHO writes, “the majority are likely to be lower limb injuries, including complex fractures with peripheral nerve injuries.” There are on the order of 15,500 of these.

Then there are amputations (often done without anesthetic).

At one point in the war last winter, ten children a day had to have a limb amputated.

Video: The constant warfare in Gaza has created a new generation of child amputees | ABC News Australia

Who observes, “It is reasonable to expect that there are between 3105 and 4050 limb amputations.” At the upper range, that would be 22 amputations a day for the first half of this year.

Then, as the horror movie unfolds, WHO informs us that there have likely been 2000 or so spinal cord and severe traumatic brain injuries. That’s likely a lot of paralyzed or partially paralyzed people.

A similar number, about 2,000, have been badly burned.

One physician who worked in Gaza reported that 80% of the victims she saw were children.

Al-Jazeera Video: “80% of Gaza victims I treated were children – Surgeons in Gaza | Islamic Help ”

Under ordinary circumstances, providing rehabilitative care for a nearly 25,000 people would be a challenge. You’d need crutches and other prophylactics, wheel chairs, neck braces, spine braces, whirlpool baths for the burned to remove dead skin. Such things are now rare in Gaza or don’t even exist. The longer a patient with severe trauma goes without treatment, the greater the danger is that the injuries will never heal properly or will get worse. Israel keeps exiling Palestinians in Gaza from one place to the next. That would be hard on the ones with spine injuries or amputated legs. The ones with spine injuries could well be killed by such a move.

People ask me how they can help. Well, first chew out your Congressman and Senators for allowing this carnage to proceed. But here’s a link for UNICEF’s Gaza effort.

(The Conversation) – A ten-month-old boy in the Gaza Strip was recently paralysed by poliovirus – the first such case in the region this century. Israel and Hamas have agreed to a limited ceasefire to allow 640,000 children in the enclave to be vaccinated against the virus.

We asked a virologist to explain how the virus emerged in the region after all this time, and how it will be dealt with.

Given that polio was all but eradicated in this region of the world, how might the ten-month-old baby in Gaza have caught it?

The sequences of the polioviruses detected in Gaza in July 2024 suggest that these viruses may be related to a strain circulating in Egypt, with the virus potentially being introduced to Gaza as early as September 2023.

This is probably due to the nature of the oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV), which contains a weakened live poliovirus that can be shed by vaccinated people. This suggests the virus may have been introduced by someone travelling to the region.

The war in Gaza has also provided an ideal environment for the virus to thrive and spread, due to the unhygienic conditions caused by little access to clean water and sanitation.

Can the virus “survive” (remain viable) for long periods without a human host?

Yes, poliovirus is an incredibly stable virus that can remain infectious for long periods outside of the human body, depending on the environmental conditions. For example, polioviruses are capable of surviving in groundwater for several weeks.

Can you explain what “wild type” poliovirus is, compared with vaccine-derived “variants”?

Wild type poliovirus is a virus that is circulating naturally in the environment, whereas vaccine-derived strains are related to the weakened virus present in the OPV, which in extremely rare cases is capable of reverting to a form capable of causing paralysis.

“Polio Swallows Gaza,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3, 2024.

Is the wild type still endemic anywhere in the world?

Due to the success of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, led by the World Health Organization, that began in 1988, type 2 and type 3 polioviruses have been declared eradicated. Only type 1 poliovirus is currently circulating in Afghanistan and Pakistan where there have been 27 recorded cases so far in 2024.

Why are most cases of polio vaccine-derived variants?

Most cases of paralytic polio are now vaccine-derived due to the success of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. OPV has been instrumental in the near-eradication of wild polioviruses around the world. However, in areas where vaccination rates drop and enough people are susceptible to infection, the weakened virus can replicate. Unfortunately, each round of replication increases the potential for the virus to revert to a form that causes illness and paralysis.

Why was the old oral polio vaccine shelved in 2016?

Following the eradication of type 2 poliovirus in 1999, the only cases of type 2 paralytic polio were vaccine derived. Therefore, to stop these cases, there was a decision to shift from the original trivalent OPV, which contained all three poliovirus serotypes, to a bivalent OPV vaccine, which only contained type 1 and type 3 poliovirus strains. With an additional type 2 specific monovalent vaccine available to contain any vaccine-derived type 2 should any cases arise.

Was that a mistake, as some experts have suggested?

Although this decision was well-intentioned, hindsight suggests that the level of vaccine-derived type 2 poliovirus was underestimated. The Global Polio Eradication Initiative commissioned a report into this decision and the draft report, which is open for public comment, has described the switch to bivalent OPV as an “unqualified failure”.

What type of poliovirus vaccine is being used in the current campaign in Gaza?

Over 1.6 million doses of the novel oral poliovirus vaccine type 2 (nOPV2) – a new poliovirus vaccine – will be delivered to the Gaza Strip to provide two doses to more than 640,000 children under the age of ten.

Will it have the same risks as the old poliovirus vaccine? That is, might it get in the wastewater and cause more polio cases?

No, the nOPV2 is a next-generation version of the traditional type 2 monovalent oral polio vaccine that is used to respond to vaccine-derived type 2 poliovirus outbreaks. The key difference is that the new vaccine contains a weakened virus that has been modified to make it more genetically stable and significantly less likely to revert to a more virulent form capable of causing paralysis, thereby increasing the chances of stopping these outbreaks for good.

What other diseases are likely to emerge in Gaza, given the interrupted vaccination campaigns?

Other vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles, pneumonia and diarrhoeal diseases, such as rotavirus, all have the potential to emerge. Each with its own dangers and complications, therefore it is really important that as many vaccines as possible are delivered into Gaza.

Lee Sherry, Postdoctoral Research Associate, School of Infection and Immunity, University of Glasgow

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

(The Conversation) – A large polio vaccination campaign started in war-torn Gaza on Sunday, September 1. The initiative, which is being led by the World Health Organization (WHO), aims to reach over 640,000 children under the age of ten.

To facilitate the vaccinations, Israel has agreed to pause its military operations in the central part of Gaza from 6am to 3pm for three days. Similar pauses are expected to follow for the northern and southern parts of the enclave – also for three days each.

Polio is a highly contagious virus, which is spread between humans and can have life-altering health consequences. It has disappeared in most countries since the introduction of vaccinations. The last case in the UK, for example, was detected in the 1990s.

But the reemergence of polio in Gaza after 25 years without a case shows the dramatic effect war can have on the health of a population.

The war has, on top of inflicting death and injury, disrupted routine healthcare. Many hospitals in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged, and those that are operating lack key staff and supplies. At the same time, about 1.9 million people are internally displaced within Gaza, which has further affected their access to healthcare.

Polio is now being targeted because of the serious danger of a rapid spread in Gaza and beyond. To stop infection outbreaks, at least 95% of children need to be vaccinated. However, the proportion of Gazans who are vaccinated against polio has fallen from 99% in 2022 to 89% today.

There is still no cure for polio, and about one in every 200 people infected will suffer irreversible paralysis. Polio is today endemic in only two countries, Pakistan and Afghanistan. This makes its reemergence in Gaza very significant for the global fight to eradicate the disease.

Around 40% of non- or under-vaccinated children worldwide live in areas affected by conflict. Vaccination campaigns in war zones aid immediate survival, as well as the eventual rebuilding of a healthy society.

However, campaign organisers face many difficulties. And this will be no different in Gaza, where the safety of health workers is being threatened by continuing violence and instability. The conflict has, for example, already claimed the lives of over 500 healthcare workers.

Vaccine logistics can be difficult even outside of conflict areas. Most vaccines have specific conditions under which they need to be transported and stored. The polio vaccine is quickly destroyed in temperatures over 8°C, and requires storage at temperatures between -15°C and -25°C before it reaches healthcare facilities.

To ensure product viability and patient safety, this “cold chain” cannot be disrupted. And necessary refrigeration equipment has been brought into Gaza. However, the transportation and storage of vaccines is being hampered by damaged roads, buildings and power supplies.

A very limited electricity supply and a persistent fuel shortage make it even more difficult to maintain cold storage.

Money and personnel are often extremely limited in conflict zones. This makes buying vaccines, distributing them and training people to administer them difficult. The polio vaccine used in Gaza is given orally, so there is no need for syringes and other supplies to be available at the same time.

As populations in conflict zones are often displaced, it is also very difficult to reach them to ensure complete vaccination coverage. But there are over 400 fixed vaccination sites, such as healthcare centres and field hospitals, where over 2,000 mostly local workers will administer the vaccines. And there are outreach sites in places where people commonly gather.

“Polio,” Digital, Midjourney / Clip2Comic, 2024.

The pause must hold

An important factor in the success or failure of the polio vaccination campaign in Gaza will be whether the pauses in the fighting hold. Several international organisations have previously paused their operations in the area to protect their workers.

Fighting has only been paused for a part of the day in specific areas of Gaza, so the war continues and there is no permanent ceasefire in sight. If the situation is too dangerous, families will be reluctant to come forward for vaccinations.

Threats do not only come from Israeli military activities. The looting of aid trucks in Gaza has created an increasingly difficult environment as people are desperate for supplies. And disinformation about the safety of the polio vaccine, though swiftly countered, has made some families unsure about the campaign.

A previous “humanitarian pause” in Gaza lasted for four days in November 2023. As there was back then, there is widespread international support for this pause. The United Arab Emirates, for example, has pledged US$5 million (£3.8 million) to support the vaccination campaign.

Coordination of the campaign between Gaza’s health ministry, the WHO, Unicef, Unrwa and others seems to be going smoothly. Thousands of children were vaccinated on the first day. And 1.2 million vaccine doses are in place within Gaza.

To achieve full vaccine protection, children in Gaza will need a second dose of the vaccine within two months of the first. Further pauses in fighting will have to be agreed to facilitate this, and resources to sustain this activity must be marshalled and healthcare workers protected.

It’s important to note that polio is not the only disease experts in Gaza are concerned about. Much of the waste water treatment infrastructure in Gaza has been destroyed, and both diarrhoea and respiratory infections are widespread, especially among young children.

Hunger also exacerbates health issues. And Gaza is facing high levels of food insecurity, with the delivery of goods into the territory still severely restricted.

Outbreaks of infectious diseases like polio have a significant effect on the survival and wellbeing of children and society. The current vaccination campaign in Gaza is thus a critical step.

But only a ceasefire will ultimately make it possible to rebuild crucial infrastructure, such as sewage treatment, to offer healthcare, and to provide enough food and medical supplies to families in Gaza.

Sarah Schiffling, Deputy Director of the HUMLOG (Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management Research) Institute, Hanken School of Economics and Liz Breen, Director of the Digital Health Enterprise Zone (DHEZ), University of Bradford, Professor of Health Service Operations, University of Bradford

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Although Israeli authorities pledged to implement pauses in fighting in vaccination hubs, UN officials say that these measures are insufficient and that a more extensive pause in fighting or even a ceasefire is necessary to safeguard the lives of the vaccination workers and of the parents and children lining up for the shots.

The campaign will be executed in phases, spanning three days each, and covering three different areas of Gaza. Vaccination coverage will be tracked and analyzed daily, and the vaccination drives will be extended by an additional day if required. The Middle East Monitor writes, “Richard Peeperkorn, the WHO’s representative in the occupied Palestinian territories, stated that the polio vaccination campaign would consist of ‘two rounds.'”

Speaking to global media on Sunday, Sam Rose, a spokesperson for UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, announced that over 200 teams are delivering the vaccine in 25 locations across the central regions of Gaza, in a race against time.

MEMO adds, “The WHO announced that the vaccination campaign in Deir al-Balah, located in central Gaza, would continue until Sept. 4. In Khan Younis, a city in southern Gaza where Israeli attacks continue, the polio vaccination campaign for children under 10 began Saturday evening.”

UNRWA posted on “X”:

Today, our teams went to @unrwa health centres, mobile medical points and tent to tent to provide #polio vaccinations to children in the middle area of the #GazaStrip

Tomorrow, they will do the same.

We are doing everything possible to help all children under 10 years of age receive the vaccination.

Temporary area pauses are critical to provide these vaccinations. Beyond the pause, these children need a long overdue #Ceasefire

Numerous Gazan families have been lining up to await their children’s turn to receive a polio immunization since early Sunday morning, in a campaign that aims to halt the resurgence of a virus driven by unsanitary conditions.

“Gaza Vaccination,” Digital, Dream / Dreamworld v3 / Clip2Comic, 2024

Responding to the launch on social media, Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, wrote at “X”:

““I am relieved” says a mother in #Gaza after her baby girl receives the two drops of vaccines in @UNRWA
clinic. 1st phase of the #polio campaign kicks off in the middle areas.

This is a race against time to reach just over 600,000 children across the Gaza Strip in the coming days.

For this to work, parties to the conflict must respect the temporary area pauses. For the sake of children across the region a lasting ceasefire is overdue.”

The vaccination effort – orchestrated by UNRWA, the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and the Palestinian Ministry of Health – will proceed in the forthcoming days if the temporary ceasefire between Hamas and Israeli forces endures.

The head of the World Health Organization posted at “X,”

Children in #Gaza are receiving much-needed #polio vaccines today.

Ultimately, the best vaccine for these children is peace. pic.twitter.com/yD1AIoXvpF

— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) September 1, 2024

For instance, Stobbe wrote, “In the 1946-48 study, American scientists infected prisoners and patients in a mental hospital in Guatemala with syphilis, apparently to test whether penicillin could prevent some sexually transmitted disease. The study came up with no useful information and was hidden for decades.”

The Israeli government is now conducting a massive experiment on over 2 million Palestinians in Gaza, half of them children, to see whether being compelled to live in completely unsanitary conditions will cause health epidemics among them and much reduce their numbers. The World Health Organization estimates tens of thousands of people to be at risk from this experiment, which recalls those not only of federal scientists in the US but of Josef Mengele.

The UN Relief and Works Agency reports that there have been 40,000 cases of hepatitis A in Gaza since Israel’s total war on its civilians began last October. There were only 85 such cases in the same period the previous year. The disease is a liver inflammation and damage, spread by exposure to raw sewage or contact with an infected person.

The World Health organization says that more people in Gaza could die from infectious diseases than from being bombed by the Israeli Air Force. Officially over 39,000 are dead in military violence, though medical professionals on the ground estimate that the true toll is likely around 100,000 by now. So WHO is saying that 40,000 to 100,000 people could die of disease, a major epidemic in a country of a little over 2 million, or at the higher estimate as much as 4.5 percent of the population. That would be equivalent to 15 million Americans — more than the entire population of Pennsylvania — being forced into such unsanitary living conditions that they died of disease.

WHO also announced that it is sending a million polio vaccines to Gaza in hopes of averting an epidemic outbreak, since the polio virus has been found in wastewater there. Dr Hanan Balkhy, WHO Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean, said at an informational meeting, “I witnessed at first hand living conditions that are highly favourable for the spread of polio and other diseases. This is an important time…to come together to act swiftly and decisively to contain this outbreak, for the children of Gaza.” Severe polio can cause paralysis for life or death.

Getting the vaccines into the Strip and having enough medical personnel to administer them is, however, a severe problem. Also, polio vaccines need to be refrigerated at 36°to 46°F (2°to 8°C), which is impossible in Gaza, where there is almost no electricity and where most hospitals have been rendered defunct by the Israeli military’s attacks.

Hepatitis A is a virus that causes acute infection. NIH notes that in some cases “hepatitis A can be severe and lead to liver failure and the need for an emergency liver transplant to survive.” For many, it lasts weeks and then goes away. There are only about 3,000 cases a year in the United States, a country of 340 million people, so 40,000 cases in a population of 2.2 million (or 2.1 million, since the Israelis have almost certainly rubbed out at least 100,000 people) is an enormous outbreak. The disease can cause loss of appetite and nausea, putting children at risk of malnutrition, especially in Gaza where so many children already suffer from it.

We should be clear that Israel is deliberately inflicting such disease outbreaks on the civilians of Gaza. By constantly keeping them on the run, destroying sewage treatment facilities or denying people the fuel and electricity needed to run them, and destroying buildings with toilets in them, the Israeli government is exposing millions of noncombatants to unsanitary conditions with malice and forethought.

The United Nations says that satellite images show that Israeli Air Force and armor have damaged or destroyed nearly two-thirds of the buildings in Gaza: “”Of these, 30 percent were destroyed, 12 percent severely damaged, 36 percent moderately damaged, and 20 percent possibly damaged, representing approximately 63 percent of the total structures in the region.” The destruction has left behind 42 metric tons of rubble, 82% more than in January. Many residential complexes were targeted with 2000-pound bombs, wiping out entire extended families.

Mohammed Naserallah, a displaced Palestinian in Gaza, said this week, “We have been displaced from the north. They told us: ‘Leave to central Gaza, then to Rafah.’ We went to Rafah, then went back up to Nuseirat. We got stuck. Then we received instructions to move farther south towards al-Mawasi.”

After Israel issued new displacement orders for central Gaza earlier this week, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud reported from the ground, “The majority of the displaced population is flowing to the Deir el-Balah city that is already packed with displaced families and has no sufficient space or resources to accommodate people.” Some 86 percent of Gaza is under Israeli “evacuation” orders, i.e. ethnic cleansing.

In its assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Iran, the Israeli military and intelligence apparatus demonstrated that it is perfectly capable of precisely targeting Hamas personnel without killing thousands of other people. Israeli investigative reporters have revealed that the Israeli army’s rules of engagement allow 15 to 20 civilian deaths for every militant killed, and that a tracking program is used to kill al-Qassam Brigade paramilitary members when they come home to their families in the evening, ensuring that their children, wives, relatives and neighbors are also blown away by drones and rockets.

—

Bonus Video:

“Gaza health officials declare polio ‘epidemic’ as virus spreads | Al Jazeera Newsfeed ”

If we want to build on the promise of Medicare, then we’re going to have to grapple directly with the power of corporate health insurance: That starts with taking on the so-called “Medicare Advantage” program.

Ed Weisbart

( Commondreams.org ) – Fifty-nine years ago today, President Lyndon Johnson signed Medicare into law—a high-water mark in the fight for universal healthcare that had started decades before and that continues to this day.

Ever since Medicare became law, it has been a shining example of what is possible in U.S. healthcare: a truly public, truly universal program that has saved countless lives and prevented untold financial ruin among America’s seniors. But alongside this success, corporate health interests have also grown immeasurably more powerful. Insurers like UnitedHealthcare and Blue Cross Blue Shield have erected cruel barriers to care and are laughing all the way to the bank.

If we want to build on the promise of Medicare—and win the best possible version of Medicare for All—then we’re going to have to grapple directly with the power of corporate health insurance. That starts with taking on the so-called “Medicare Advantage” program.

The Strategic Importance of Medicare Advantage

Single-payer advocates understand that there can’t be “Medicare for All” if there is no “Medicare.” And no, Medicare Advantage (MA) doesn’t count as Medicare. The health insurance corporations that run these plans have a business imperative to prioritize profits above all else; this is anathema to any public health program.

Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) has compiled overwhelming evidence that MA insurers are harming patients, physicians, and hospitals by delaying and denying care—harms that are virtually unseen in Traditional Medicare. Nor is this cruelty even a trade-off for lowering the cost of healthcare. In fact, these corporations are paid far more than what is spent for similar patients in Traditional Medicare—up to $140 billion per year, or as much as 35% above the funding levels of Traditional Medicare.

There is no road to Medicare for All that ignores this existential threat.

Where we see middlemen standing between patients and the care they need, we should remove them. Where we see limited provider networks, we should expand them. Where we see piles of pre-authorization paperwork, we should shred them.

Thankfully, support for eliminating overpayments to MA extends far beyond those who are already committed to single payer. This fight builds our movement by mobilizing a wide range of people who understand, or can be educated about, the damage insurance companies are doing to patients. When we find common ground, we should walk together.

For that reason, PNHP is exposing MA overpayments and demanding a more fiscally responsible approach from policymakers. We are working closely with several organizations to change the national conversation and provide a badly needed counterweight to the lobbying might of big insurance.

When MA was created, way back in 2003, corporate insurers promised to reduce the cost of healthcare by improving care coordination and health outcomes. A healthier population, they claimed, would be less expensive. We should demand that MA corporations live up to these lofty promises without billions of dollars in overpayments.

We’d like to see them try.

Improved Medicare… for ALL

Winning back $140 billion in annual overpayments begs a tantalizing question: How can we use those funds to improve Medicare for all seniors?

Instead of the paltry benefits that MA plans offer, those funds would help us add robust hearing, vision, and dental benefits; totally eliminate Medicare Part B premiums; and fold in the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit. Imagine the relief a senior on Medicare Advantage would feel when enrolling in a plan that actually covers the full range of dental care, while also freeing themselves from the narrow provider networks and prior authorization requirements imposed by MA plans.

Most critically, we need to establish a low out-of-pocket maximum for Medicare. Insurance corporations lure seniors and people with disabilities into the MA trap by selling lower up-front costs while hiding substantial barriers to care. It’s a classic bait and switch. Eliminating the need to purchase Medigap would level the playing field and allow everybody to remain in Traditional Medicare.

Let’s work to build a movement of seniors, physicians, students, people with disabilities, and everybody else who cares about Medicare.

Well, not everybody—but that’s our ultimate goal. PNHP advocates for a national single-payer health insurance program, and what better way to get there than through an improved version of the already popular Medicare program?

Where we see middlemen standing between patients and the care they need, we should remove them. Where we see limited provider networks, we should expand them. Where we see piles of pre-authorization paperwork, we should shred them.

We should also expand benefits to include all medically necessary care, and ultimately eliminate out-of-pocket costs that deter people from seeing a doctor. Once these improvements are in place, we will have a program that’s truly worthy of the name Medicare for All.

The advocacy work for these priorities—ending MA overpayments, improving Traditional Medicare, and realizing our vision for single payer—overlap and build on one another.

Let’s work to build a movement of seniors, physicians, students, people with disabilities, and everybody else who cares about Medicare. Together, we can take on the corporate insurers that are wreaking so much havoc in our lives and lay the groundwork for winning a single-payer program that brings everybody in and leaves nobody out

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Licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.