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Are You Taking Part in the June 25 Health Care Rally? |
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Union, health care and community activists from around the nation are set to converge on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., this week to tell Congress there is no time to waste in passing health care reform legislation that provides quality health care for all.
As a congressional hearing revealed last week, health care reform must also rein in the most outrageous and abusive practices of the private insurance industry.
The June 25 rally and lobby day sponsored by Health Care for America Now! (HCAN) is expected to be the largest ever health care rally. Click here for more rally information from HCAN and text “HEALTH” to 94553 to receive updates on fast-moving health care reform activities throughout the summer.
The rally will provide a real grassroots voice to counter the multi-million dollar campaign against real reform the private insurance industry, pharmaceutical giants and conservatives groups are waging against President Obama’s health care reform initiatives. Their special target is a public health insurance plan option for workers and families who either have private insurance coverage or no coverage at all.
More than three-quarters of those polled in a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll say it’s important for the American public to have a choice between a public plan option and a private one.
A public option would give working families a choice. If they are satisfied with the insurance they have now, keep it. But if not, they would have an option of choosing a public plan. That type of competition is vital to lowering costs and keeping insurance companies honest.
Keeping private insurance companies honest isn’t an easy task, as the CEOs of three of the biggest health insurers showed at congressional hearing last week. But the trio also provided some of the most compelling evidence yet why a public insurance plan option with a guarantee of coverage is desperately needed.
At a House Energy and Commerce Committee’s oversight and investigations subcommittee hearing, the three vigorously defended canceling medical coverage for sick-and paid-up-policy holders, especially those facing tens of thousands of dollars in potential treatment costs.
The practice is called “rescission” and an investigation by the subcommittee, writes Los Angeles Times reporter Lisa Girion, found
health insurers WellPoint Inc., UnitedHealth Group and Assurant Inc. canceled the coverage of more than 20,000 people, allowing the companies to avoid paying more than $300 million in medical claims over a five-year period.
It also found that policyholders with breast cancer, lymphoma and more than 1,000 other conditions were targeted for rescission and that employees were praised in performance reviews for terminating the policies of customers with expensive illnesses.
The insurance industry claims it only rescinds policies when it finds fraud on the part of the policy holder. But the investigation found, and witnesses testified, that policies were canceled for inadvertent omissions or honest mistakes about medical history on their applications.
Robin Beaton, a retired nurse from Texas, who for years faithfully paid her Blue Cross premiums, was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer. Three days before a scheduled double mastectomy, the insurance company told her they were launching an investigation into her policy and then canceled it for failing to disclose a visit to a dermatologist for acne. She told the lawmakers:
The sad thing is, Blue Cross gladly took my high premiums, and the first time I filed a claim and was suspected of having cancer, they searched high and low for a reason to cancel me.
She eventually received her operation, but only after her member of Congress intervened with the company.
Witnesses told the committee that rescissions were about boosting corporate profits rather than fighting fraud.. Said Jennifer Horton from Los Angeles, whose policy was canceled because she had been taking a drug for irregular menstruation:
It’s about the money…. insurers ignore the law, and when they find a discrepancy or omission, they rescind the policy and refuse to pay any of your medical bills-even for routine treatment or treatment they previously authorized.
Since my rescission, I have had to take jobs that I do not want, and put my career goals on hold to ensure that I can find health insurance.
Lawmakers asked the three executives-Richard A. Collins, chief executive of UnitedHealth’s Golden Rule Insurance Co.; Don Hamm, chief executive of Assurant Health and Brian Sassi, president of consumer business for WellPoint Inc.-if they would promise to halt rescissions except in the cases on intentional fraud.
All three said: “No.” That refusal, said Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.),
is precisely why we need a public option.
Jerry Flanagan, a patient advocate with Santa Monica-based Consumer Watchdog, told the Times’ Girion:
When insurance companies go under oath and admit they are canceling innocent patients when they get sick, it makes it very difficult for lawmakers to pass a law that requires every American to buy a policy or face a tax fine. It opens the way for a public option to hold the companies in check.
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“A public option would give working families a choice. If they are satisfied with the insurance they have now, keep it. But if not, they would have an option of choosing a public plan.” Well I can’t see how HCAN can support this lie. The cost is a trillion $$, and cuts the 46-47 million uninsured by a lousy third, where are those wanting to opt in the “public plan” going to fit in? I though t this was reform?
Single Payer would cost less than a trillion to implement, and EVERYONE gets covered! HCAN is a sham!!! To all those who plan to attend this “historic” rally, hold up the “HR 676, EVERYONE, NOBODY OUT” signs high to make our statement!
15% of US GDP goes to health care – with 135% of comparable (OECD) per-capita GDPs – what’s the universal health hold up?
Imagine a US economy in which 25% of wages lie below the federal minimum and 30% of families subsist below realistic (not the phony federal) poverty lines (not counting government helps like food stamps — sounds like something out of “Soylent Green”).
Not merely imagination if we are talking LBJ’s federal minimum wage of 1968: $10/hr ($1.60/hr adjusted for inflation – average income has nearly doubled since!).
Matching believable family minimum needs tables found in the 2002 book “Raise the Floor” (not quack federal poverty lines, computed as three times the price of an emergency diet — dried beans only please, no canned) with Census historical family income tables reveals in the neighborhood of 30% of American families below minimum needs (without government helps — eight-grade math is here).
Meanwhile, average top 1 percentile household income reached a stratospheric $1.2 million dollars (hint: 100 X $12,000) in 2006 – just not your over-trained, over-worked family doctor’s household. The 15% of income share relocated from the pockets of bottom 90 percentile earners to top 1 percentile buckets flew right past him or her. (Note match with 15% of GDP we strain to allot to less than universal care.) It’s the labor market, doc.
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Bumping up the minimum wage over three years to $12.50/hr (in real terms — $1 every six months?) would add all of 2 1/2% to the cost of GDP output (how much our per capita GDP typically grows every year or two) and presumably to direct inflation – raise 40% of American workers to a still minimum family needs short $500/wk — and likely recirculate much demand in the direction of high minimum wage use businesses (lower wage tending to serve lower wage).
The end of the middle class race to the (Wal-Mart) bottom in almost the entire first-world (even in second-world Argentina and third-world Indonesia) is called sector-wide labor contracts: same job description, same geographic locale equals same contract conditions across diverse firms – legislation required.
The French-Canadian “lite” version of sector-wide – in which non-union firms work under terms collectively bargained with unionized firms — is available right nearby for easy study and adaptation — Canada’s economy mostly mirroring our own.
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Looking for a “natural” (as in no artificial inducements) demand boost to ease our two-pronged (financial and real estate) recession: start most Americans toward recapturing that 15% of income share lost over three and a half decades to folks who earn lots more than doctors (the top of top 1 percentile earners). Mere anticipation of renewed buying power to be refreshed by rebuilt bargaining power could unleash a third of a century of pent up demand. It’s the “Great Wage Depression” Americans.
FOR CONVENIENT DATA LINKS IN THIS POST GO TO: http://ontodayspage.blogspot.com/2009/06/did-so-called-inequality-more-like.html
Looking forward to participating in the march-rally,proud to carry my HR 676–single payer sign.The only way to cover everyone and reduce costs is a single payer system,that we must struggle for.
“If they are satisfied with the insurance they have now, keep it. But if not, they would have an option of choosing a public plan.”
How is that possible if the current proposal of a public plan will cut only a third of the 46-47 million uninsured? And for a trillion $$ price tag, it makes no sense. They are also talking about taxing our insurance benefits, (something Obama opposed), and now co-ops? For less than a trillion $$, single payer could be implemented, ridding us of the profit seeking insurance companies. HCAN is a sham!
The corrupt gangster “health care” bandits need to be completely cut out of their parasitic role of greed, that has destroyed the lives and wealth of MILLIONS OF PEOPLE!
Surveys are showing that 70 percent majority of working people want “single payer” and want nothing more to do with these crooks!
It is only because of the corrupt Obama and Democratic Party administration, supposedly now in full control of Congress and the Presidency, that are falling head over heals to pay off these
gangsters for their millions in campaign contributions.
These same Democrats are invested in these health corporations, on the boards of Directors, stockholders, etc.
We do not have government “of, by and for” the people. The corporations own the government by owning the Congress. Thus
unending wars, destruction and privatization of public schools, public health, etc.
I HOPE EVERYONE ABLE TO GO TO THE ‘HEALTH CARE REFORM’ RALLY WILL CARRY SIGNS AND BANNERS FOR SINGLE-PAYER
UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE!
I am surprised that opponents of health care reform continue to use the same scare tactics they always use (”socialized medicine” “bureaucrats making dr.’s decisions for them” “trillion dollar this and that”), despite the fact that Americans are spending more on health care than any other industrialized country, east or west, and have one of the lowest overall quality ratings. More is clearly less here. Over 60% of personal bankruptcies are as a result of medical bills. Medical inflation far outpaces anything else in the economy, making the future direction of American health care completely and utterly unsustainable. For union members, we need to be able to get back to bargaining about wages and working conditions. It is not our job to solve the health care crisis at our bargaining tables.
For those against reform (or the sneakier position: “Of course, reform! Just not this reform….”), be careful what you ask for. No reform now and we can put Rest In Peace sign out for the American economy long before any of us get to our own final resting places.
We’ll be showing up by the bus loads from New York. I hope other cities can say the same.
Problem, this plan is no reform. As long as the insurance companies sit at the table and tell Congress members (those who are in the pockets of the insurance lobbyists) how to “reform” health care, then nothing changes. When contract negotiations come up, and companies continue to want to cut your health benefits, what has changed? thanks to the AFL-CIO!
A Fantasy … a Dream… a strategy for a born again labor movement??
1. On July 25th, The leaders of organized labor announce that
the will no longer support health care “reform”, only a “single-
payer solution.
2. The labor movement is “drawing the line” on this issue.
3. If the Democratic Congress and Obama do not pass a single-payer health plan, the labor movement will issue
a call to establish a new political party organized to defend and promote the economic interests of all working people.
4. The new party will work to end corporate and capitalist control of government. The economic survival of all working people demands the following:
* Single-payer national universal health insurance.
* An end to all foreign wars, motivated to enrich the oil corporations and military contractors, to end the vast waste and corruption in “defense budgets, to restore the wealth to the needs of the people through funding in the states and local governments, public education, public services and utilities, etc.
* To restore full employment to all working people through rebuilding our cities, public transportation, new energy technologies, to eliminate polluting businesses with sustainable worker owned and managed replacement.
5. To gain control of the economy, nationalize the banks, nationalize the entire energy industry (oil, gas, nuclear, electrical) etc. that is currently destroying the planet with pollution
and global warming.
6. To establish mass media (radio, television, newspapers) that will end the corporate control and propaganda saturated in all information, discussion of current issues that forever prevents the people from understanding what has happened.
The essential economic needs of working people today are now the needs of humanity, of society, to survive the vast crises created by run-amok gangster capitalism.
Read World Socialist Web Site http://www.wsws.org
Make that June 25…. in just 3 days!
A Fantasy … a Dream… a strategy for a “born again” labor movement?
1. On June 25th, The leaders of organized labor announce that
the will no longer support health care “reform”, only a “single-
payer solution.
…
Please note the following article posted on the World Socialist Web Site, which gives a true analysis of the different health care “reform” proposals.
Take the profit out of health care
23 June 2009
Kate Randall
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jun2009/pers-j23.shtml
Americans are overwhelmingly dissatisfied with the state of the nation’s health care system. A New York Times/CBS news poll released over the weekend showed that 85 percent of respondents said that the health care system needed to be fundamentally changed or rebuilt.
The survey also found that 72 percent would support a government-administered insurance plan, and that half of those questioned thought the government would do a better job than private insurers at providing medical coverage.
The reality, however, is that health care reform being promoted by the Obama administration, and being drafted and debated in the House and Senate, will not address the burning health care needs of millions of adults and children. The entire debate in the White House and Congress is framed from the standpoint of cutting costs, rationing care and defending the profits of the giant health care conglomerates.
…
The outcome of Obama’s reforms will be, in the end, that the majority of Americans will have less health care than they do at present. Indeed, the state government of California, with the full support of the Obama administration, is already planning the elimination of key social programs, including subsidized health care to hundreds of thousands of children.