1,000 Help Unmask Right-Wing Billionaires’ Secret Strategy Session
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More than 1,000 activists, including members of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United (CNA/NNU), AFSCME, Health Care for America Now (HCAN) and Common Cause, helped shine a big spotlight on a closed-door gathering of right-wing billionaires and extreme conservative leaders and politicians in Palm Springs, Calif., yesterday.
The strategy meeting was organized by billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch who have been instrumental in orchestrating the tea party movement and funding much of the modern right-wing infrastructure.
Past participants in the secret conclave have included media personalities like Glenn Beck, members of Congress and Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia.
The event has taken on even greater importance in light of the Supreme Court’s 2010 “Citizens United” decision, which enabled the Kochs and their allies to spend unlimited resources on the 2010 elections. The lawmakers they helped elect are backing a corporate agenda that includes repealing health care and Wall Street reform, privatizing Social Security and rolling back worker and consumer protections.
Health Coverage Declines But Companies’ Profits Soar
The number of working-age Americans who get their health care coverage through work dropped for the ninth year in a row in 2009, according to a new study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). The main reason, says the report, is the lousy economy and an unemployment rate that jumped from 5.8 percent in 2008 to 9.3 in 2009.
The latest figures show that employment-based health insurance fell from 61.9 percent of workers in 2008 to 58.9 percent in 2009. Says Elise Gould, Director of Health Policy Research at EPI and author of the report:
The current recession and its negative impact on access to health care highlight how dependent Americans are on a healthy labor market for all facets of economic security.
The report points out that the new health care reform law will make it easier and more affordable for Americans to secure and maintain health insurance coverage. But the “continued poor labor market will likely lead to”
further losses in insurance coverage before this major relief takes effect in 2014.
Click here for the full report.
The lousy economy hasn’t had much of an impact on six of the nation’s biggest private health insurance companies which saw their profits increase by 22 percent over last year in the quarter that ended in September, according to a new analysis by Health Care for America Now! (HCAN). Read the rest of this entry »
Insurers Set to End Sick Kids’ Policies
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This Thursday, Sept. 23, several key components of the health care reform law go into effect, including a ban on denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions. But just this week, several large health insurers began an end-run around the law when they announced that rather than cover kids, they’ll get out of the business of selling children’s policies.
That action, says Ethan Rome, executive director of Health Care for America Now (HCAN), is “immoral…appalling…and dishonest.”
We’re just days away from a new era when insurance companies must stop denying coverage to kids just because they are sick, and now some of the biggest changed their minds and decided to refuse to sell child-only coverage. The latest announcement by the insurance companies that they won’t cover kids is immoral, and to blame their appalling behavior on the new law is patently dishonest.
Failing to Kill Health Care Reform, Insurers Now Fight to Weaken It
After spending tens of millions of dollars trying to kill the new health care reform law, the nation’s big health insurance companies now, says Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), are:
sparing no expense to weaken this new law and the protection it promises to America’s consumers.
According to a new report by the coalition Health Care for America Now (HCAN), big insurers are trying to gut proposed new rules that require they spend a certain amount of premium dollars on actual medical care, not wasteful administration, marketing or executive pay and bonuses.
Small Business Group, HCAN Blast WellPoint CEO Pay, Consumer Rate Hikes
The CEO and board of directors of health insurance giant WellPoint faced tough questions about the company’s excessive rate hikes, its campaign to kill health care reform and executive pay from shareholders—including small business owners—at its annual board meeting yesterday.
WellPoint shareholders from the small business group Main Street Alliance and the coalition Health Care for America Now (HCAN) blasted the recent increase in CEO Angela Braly’s total compensation—which skyrocketed by 51 percent in 2009 to $13.1 million. They also challenged as inaccurate the company’s submission of data to California regulators to convince them to permit double-digit premium increases for individuals in 2010. The company withdrew its plans to raise rates by as much as 39 percent after regulators questioned the figures submitted by WellPoint subsidiary Anthem Blue Cross.
CIGNA Admits to Secret Funding for Anti-Health Care Reform Ads
Back in January, as the fight over health care reform was in high gear, the National Journal pinned down what most of us suspected all the time: The nation’s biggest health insurers had been funneling money—about $20 million—quietly to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to air lie-filled, scare-mongering ads about health care reform.
That revelation flew in the face of the insurance industry’s claim that it really supported health care reform, but they were just dickering over the details. While the facts about the secret funds were on the record and not disputed, the big insurers didn’t address the issue.
Join Today’s Virtual March on Congress for Health Care Now
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Today, you can join in a million-person march for health care in Washington, D.C., without traipsing through our leftover snow banks. Our friends at MoveOn, Health Care for America Now! (HCAN) and other groups are staging a virtual march on the nation’s capital to tell Congress it’s time to stop stalling and pass real health care reform.
The virtual march coincides with a real life Capitol Hill rally and the arrival in Washington—after an eight-day, 135-mile march from Philadelphia—of a group of health care activists honoring the memory of Melanie Shouse. The St. Louis, Mo., health care activist recently lost her battle with breast cancer after her insurance company refused to pay for treatment her doctors said she needed. She was 41 years old.
The virtual and real rallies—the day before the televised White House health care summit—are designed to tell lawmakers they have had plenty of time to discuss and debate health care reform over the past year, and now it’s their job to make it happen.
Click here to join the virtual march and here, here and here for reports, photos and videos from Melanie’s March.
Health Care Reform Would Cure Many Ills—and More Health News
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A new study shows the connections between low income, poor health and overall inequality and how providing better access to quality health care—exactly what health care reform is all about—can improve more than just health.
Alexander Hertel-Fernandez of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) explains:
“In their new book, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett review the medical and sociological research that links inequality to poorer outcomes, not just in health but also for trust, political institutions, violence, social mobility and education.”
The Cost of ‘No’ and Other Health Care Perspectives
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Here’s the latest news from the fight for real health care reform:
• In the Baltimore Sun, Tom Schaller looks at how the nation’s broken health care system is undermining our economy. The cost of doing nothing to reform health care would be trillions of dollars, he says.
• In a great new piece at the Huffington Post, Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) explains why he’s saying “Yes” to health care reform. We’re at a defining historical moment, Bennet says, and we can’t afford to continue the status quo.
• Think Progress looks at how insurance company bureaucrats are standing between patients and their doctors.
• The National Farmers Union has come out in support of health care reform, saying rural families need lower costs, more choices and better access to care. Senators from heavily rural states like Arkansas, Maine and Nebraska should pay attention.
Here’s How the House’s Health Care Reform Would Help You
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With successful passage of a historic health care reform bill this weekend, experts are weighing in on the benefits that the bill would bring to working families.
Maggie Mahar, a longtime observer of health care policy, says the progress Congress has made on health care is “astounding” and the House bill would move millions of families to less expensive, more comprehensive health care coverage, protecting them from medical bankruptcy, lifetime coverage caps and other consequences of our current flawed system.
A study by MIT health care economist Jonathan Gruber suggests the changes in the House proposal will lower premiums by hundreds or even thousands of dollars for middle-class families who are looking to buy insurance.
