Health Care Opponents Know Which Words to Use to Derail Reform
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The U.S. House and Senate are moving to finish comprehensive health care reform legislation before adjourning for an August recess. Meanwhile, congressional Republicans and their allies in the corporate health care world—especially the private health insurance industry—are following a well-crafted, but lie-filled, propaganda script to kill health care reform.
But an insurance industry insider offers further proof why health care reform is so desperately needed—especially a plan that includes a strong public health insurance plan option and curbs to prevent the insurance industry’s abusive practices.
Study: Medical Bills Behind Most Bankruptcies
Crushing medical bills were the major cause of 62 percent of all personal bankruptcies in 2007. Even worse—75 percent of those with medical bill-related bankruptcies had health insurance.
More bad news: The percentages cited above were based on data collected before the nation’s economy began its long nose dive.
Says one of the study’s authors, David Himmelstein, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School:
Unless you’re a Warren Buffett or Bill Gates, you’re one illness away from financial ruin in this country. If an illness is long enough and expensive enough, private insurance offers very little protection against medical bankruptcy, and that’s the major finding in our study.
The U.S. health care financing system is broken, and not only for the poor and uninsured. Middle-class families frequently collapse under the strain of a health care system that treats physical wounds, but often inflicts fiscal ones.
Coalition Set to Fight for Public Option in Health Care Reform
A coalition of progressive groups representing more than 30 million people, is set to build support for health care reform legislation that includes a public health insurance plan option and to battle the private health insurance industry’s deep-pocketed campaign to block a public plan option.
The coalition, which made the announcement yesterday at the America’s Future Now! conference in Washington, D.C., will focus on grassroots organizing around the nation to build public and congressional support—and apply pressure to Congress—to include a public plan option.
Here Come the Big Lies About Health Care Reform
We noted a few days ago how the private insurance industry was set to unleash its attack dogs on health care reform to try to kill a public health insurance plan option as part of President Obama’s health care reform initiative.
Those dogs have started to bark.
Yesterday, the fake group, Americans for Prosperity (AFP)—another one of those astroturf names meant to appeal to All of Us—launched a $1.7 million TV ad campaign claiming we may all die if Obama’s health care reform proposals are enacted.
