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Insurers Get Fat Pay Hikes While Workers Skip Treatment
While more and more working Americans can’t afford health care, big insurance CEOs are getting fat pay increases—and raising health insurance premiums.
Between 2007 and 2009, more than 25 percent of Americans reduced their use of health care—two to five times the rate than in Britain, Canada, France and Germany, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. Here’s one big reason why: Nearly 15 percent of Americans are uninsured, while the other countries have near-universal coverage. Read the report, “The Economic Crisis and Medical Care Usage,” here.
Yet, while Americans are forced to cut back on health care, the insurance companies are raising premiums and using the money to lavish exorbitant salaries on CEOs and are paying huge fees to lobbyists to convince regulators to soften the rules so that they can make even more money.
CEOs of the nation’s health care companies made nearly $1 billion last year—enough to pay for every resident of Philadelphia, Dallas and Minneapolis combined to go to their doctor for an office visit, according to a report by Health Care for America Now (HCAN).
Since 2007, the insurance industry has spent at least $769 million to lobby policymakers and elected officials to influence health care legislation and regulation. Now its training its sights on the state regulators who are considering important rules setting minimum levels of insurance company spending on patient care. The new rules could rein in profits, CEO pay, lobbying costs and administrative expenses.
So when more than 1,000 lobbyists and health care executives swarmed all over the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) meeting in Seattle last weekend, some 150 activists from the Washington State HCAN and their supporters fought back.
They demonstrated outside and then went inside the conference center to deliver “lobbyist disinfectant kits” to the regulators so they could defend themselves against the lobbyists.
The kits included face masks to prevent the inhalation of lobbists’ airborne lies, hand sanitizer for frequent clean ups and deodorant soap for anyone whose encounters with these enablers of corporate greed felt like they needed a shower. They even set up a triage center at the picket line to treat those most heavily exposed to lobbyists’ dirty tricks.
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9 Comments
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Sometimes I feel it is shocking how much everything seems to be working against the ordinary citizen. Thanks for the story.
An Alternative to Capitalism (which will provide free health care)
The following link takes you to an essay titled: “Home of the Brave?” which was published by the
Athenaeum Library of Philosophy:
http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/steinsvold.htm
John Steinsvold
Not to rain on anyone’s “parade”, but the so-called reform passed by Congress recently will not change much for the average healthcare consumer. One big difference: the HMOs will have a bigger trough to feed off of and those of us who can’t afford the “reformed” healthcare will be fined by the government!
Single Payer/Medicare For All is the only viable solution to the chaos and corruption that exists in the U.S. healthcare system.
However there is one BIG prerequisite for single payer… Congres must be made up of REAL men and women not mamby pamby prostitutes for the corporate elite!
Hear, Hear, Mestizo Warrior!
Since the Democrats will not fight for Single Payer, organized labor must break with the Democratic Party and help build a party accountable to working women and men who suffer the catastrophe of the capitalist system of profit from sickness and injury over just healthcare for all. We need a Labor Party, a Workers Party! As a big stride toward this, we need to actively support independent candidates who call for single-payer healthcare, like for example, Jill Stein, who is running for governor of Massachusetts. No Premiums! No Deductibles! No Insurance Companies! Take profit out of healthcare – the insatiable greed of the capitalist system of HMOs and Big Pharma, foisted on us, and continuously elaborated to new lows of healthcare insecurity and new heights of expense to the millions and more and more mega-profits to the millionaires and billionaires, by a Congress of millionaires mostly owned by the medical greed industries. Finally, single payer is only the first real step toward the only rational system of healthcare provision: that which is democratically planned to serve the needs of all of us, in other words, Socialized Medicine. You may not like the term, the bugaboo of both Republicrats and Demopublicans (not to mention all the far right libertarians and crazies). But a system of democratically, rationally planned healthcare delivery, freed from the curse of profiteering off of peoples’ illness, and providing high-quality services and care to all people, is what we need and must have. The Demopublicans and the Republicrats have no vision of progress, constantly betray working women and men, and collectively are a political tower of jelly and cowardice. We need real progress, not empty rhetoric and broken promises from millionaire so-called “representatives.”
Right on! 100% thumbs up!
It would be great to see the AFL-CIO endorse Jill Stein for Governor in Massachusetts. She ran a strong campaign in 2002 and participated in some of the televised debates, really showing herself to be a solid candidate. I assume she is still with the Green-Rainbow Party and hope labor gets behind her campaign.
No surprise here……this legislation does nothing for those already receiving employment-based health care, except to keep them an indentured Labor force, trading REAL wages to subsidize the ever-increasing premiums for health care, essentially feeding the Beast of profit-driven health care delivery forever.
If there is any regulation of this Beast (insurance, pharmaceuticals, medical supply/device/services and for-profit doctors and hospitals,
you can be sure, you and I the patients, will pay dearly in increased premiums, co-pays and deductibles.
Yes, it is time for the AFL-CIO to come out screaming….. this is not reform for US workers…. Obama and the DNC, you must do better!
I do agree about single payer I also agree on a party for the working class as that use to be dems but only some of them really can hold that working class title. If it’s called a “labor party” it will only succeed in heavily unionized states. It you dub it something like “working class party” it works for all people union and non-union without getting it into a labor bashing from the hard core republicans or tea party people. We have to get creative and we need candidates that really are working class.
Health Care for America Now (HCAN) is too blame for this so-called health care reform bill. HCAN pushed single payer supporters into believing Obamacare was the answer. Insurance companies were the problem, will still be the problem. Is is shamefull that the AFL-CIO who had endorsed single payer but jumped into bed with HCAN for Obamacare. Kucinich has announced he will not challenge Obama in 2012. Who then Hillary? Labor is screwed.