Robert Greenwald's video. See Cigna rake in the dough by denying coverage while people are dying

This video is around five minutes and worth the time. Clearly illustrates why real health care reform is desparately needed and why the insurance industry is fighting so hard against it.

Sanchez at CNN talks about the influence of money in washington

Wow. Watch this. As Cenk points out, Sanchez is doing real journalism:


I found this video posted on Daily Kos today- robertacker's diary.

My letter to the editor on health care in the New York Times

In a letter to the editor that I wrote to The New York Times this week (scroll down, it's the fifth one if you want to read it) I asked "Is Obama punking us?" This was the title of one of Frank Rich's columns this summer, and I wanted to use it because it expressed exactly what I, and many of the people who voted for Obama in November have been wondering as we watch the President backpedaling on promises he made during the campaign. The NYT edited out the "punking" part but the message is still clear: The change we believed in is not exactly what we had hoped it would be.

OBama gave a strong speech before a joint session of Congress Wednesday night, where he laid out his plan for health care reform. But he wavered on what I believe is the central issue of health care reform, which is the public option, a government run Medicare-like insurance plan that Obama himself has said, "will provide the competition needed to keep private insurance companies honest and keep prices down."(Click here here for a thourough discussion of the topic and scroll down to find the public option portion of Obama's speech.)

While Obama endorsed the idea of a public option in his speech,he didn't insist upon it. In fact he brought up triggers (the idea the public option kicks at some indefinite time in the future if insurance companies don't follow through) and co-ops ( this is where smaller groups in each state band together to purchase insurance), alternatives to a public option which have been proposed by conservative democrats from red states like Kent Conrad and Max Baucus who are opposed to the public option. Ideas that have been widely discredited (here and here and here) but that nonetheless have garnered support from the White House (in his speech, Obama said they were ideas worth exploring) because they would like win over Olympia Snowe, the one Republican who might be willing to come on board, in hopes of having what they can call a "bipartisan" bill.

Without the public option to provide cost competition, Obama's health care plan, with mandates for the 47 million uninsured Americans to purchase insurance, would be nothing less than a gift to the private insurance industry which will have 47 million new customers.

Competition is the whole point. Obama's plan provides serious and much needed regulation over private insurance. It requires a cap on out out of pocket expenses for policy holders, keeps private insurance companies from canceling policies when customers make claims and will not allow them to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions. But what is to keep private insurance industry from passing on the costs of reform to their customers, by raising the price of premiums if they don't have competiton to hold the price down. People would flock to a public-run plan that offered fair and affordable health care, and they should. That 's why the insurance industry is fighting so hard against the public option. They don't want any real competition.

Obama also said that only small businesses and the uninsured will be allowed to buy into the public option. But what about the rest of us who might prefer a public plan, if it were available, to the high-priced private plans we are forced to pay for now?

It is hard to understand why Obama and legislators from both sides of the aisle are tying themselves in knots to protect the profits of the insurance industry.The system we have now is unsustainable, as Obama stated, and the problems of lack of insurance for close to 50 million people and under insurance for millions more must be addressed by real and meaningful legislation that will result in this country providing affordable coverage for all Americans, as does every other wealthy nation in the world.

Obama told the story of a nurse from Texas with breast cancer whose insurance company canceled her coverage just before she was scheduled for a double mastectomy. Months later, with the help of her Republican Congressman, she eventually got her coverage reinstated, but not before her tumor had expanded and reduced her chances for a successful outcome. (You can watch Robin Beaton testify before a congressional committee here, and watch portions of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee Hearing on “Terminations of Individual Health Policies by Insurance Companies” here.)

The horror stories abound. It's time to do something about it.
I don't think we should pull the plug on grandma but we definitely ought to pull the plug on private insurance.

Start by letting the President and your Congressmen know that they should not vote for any legislation unless it contains a public option.

Here's a video by former labor secretary and Huffington Post contributor Robert Reich, explaining why the public option is so important.
It's short and easy to follow. Pass it on!

Note to Obama:Forget bipartisanship -- they don't want you to win

With control of the House, the Senate and the presidency, you would think that the Democrats could do almost anything. But the fight to produce meaningful health care reform is being pitted against powerful interests. Among other things, these interests are trying to derail the plan for a strong public option to compete with private insurance plans.
The Washington Post reports that the health care industry is spending $1.4 million per day to defeat health care reform, their aim, to minimize damage while maximizing the money-making potential of 46 million uninsured Americans mandated by the plan to purchase insurance from them.

The health care industry is throwing money at democratic legislators like the Blue Dogs in the House and senators like Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance committee, who can influence the debate and have opposed President Obama on the public option.

A group of six senators, three Republicans and three Democrats from the Finance committee, lead by Baucus, is working on legislation which, it is rumored, will not contain a public option, in spite of the fact that Obama said that a public option is necessary to compete with private plans and “keep them honest.”

The health care industry also has a seat at the table in negotiations about health care reform with the White House. Recently it was revealed in The LA Times and has been confirmed by the White House, that they had committed to a “behind-the -scenes” deal with the pharmaceutical industry whereby the requirement to allow Medicare to to negotiate drug prices and to import cheaper drugs from Canada would be dropped from the health care reform bill coming out of the Finance Committee in exchange for a promise from the pharmaceutical industry to decrease costs by $80 billion over 10 years to help pay for health care reform.

In an article by Norman Solomon at Huffington Post, John Geyman, professor emeritus for family medicine at the University of Washington said "Under pressure from industry and their lobbyists, the public plan has been watered down to a small and ineffectual option at best, if it ever survives to being enacted."

Republicans in Congress see the fight against health care reform as a chance to take down the Obama presidency.

Senator Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) said in a phone call for “tea party” participants organized by Conservatives for Patients Rights, a $20 million dollar operation created by Richard Scott, former CEO of Hospital Corporation of America, to campaign against the public option, “If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.”

(In 1997, by the way, three HCA executives were indicted for Medicare fraud. In 2000, HCA plead guilty to at least 14 felonies and over the next two years paid $1.7 billion in criminal and civil fines.)

House Republican Leader John Boehner and Republican Policy Committee Chairman Thaddeus McCotter issued a joint statement saying that the House democratic health care legislation promoted euthanasia for seniors and Congresswoman Virginia Scott (R-N.C.) said on the House floor that the bill would “ force seniors to be put to death by their government.”

In August, while congress is in recess and legislators return to their home districts to discuss health care reform with constituents, anti-health reform forces are fomenting (and backing) Astroturf (phony grassroots) disruptions at town hall meetings to prevent legislators who support health care reform from being heard. (You can see video here of Astroturf disruptions and Keith Olberman discussing mob mentality with Princeton professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell.)

It has been suggested that Obama, remembering what happened to the Clintons when they tried to introduce health care reform, decided to allow Congress to come up with health care legislation while he remained more or less on the sidelines. He has called for a bipartisan bill but in trying to get a bill that will allow a few Republicans to come on board, for the sake of being able to say it is bipartisan, he may weaken the legislation to the extent that it will not produce meaningful change in a system that is essentially broken and crying for reform.

Recent polling shows Obama’s approval dropping. A Quinnipiac poll from August 6 found 52% disapproved of his handling of health care while only 39% approve. Not surprising when polling here and here, also reveals that a majority of Americans want health care reform.

Obama could to put a stop to all of this by stating loudly and clearly exactly what he believes.

Specifically, that health care reform without a public option is not an option.

Hopefuly that is what he believes. Unfortunately, in recent speeches he has refrained from insisting that the public option must be part of health care reform.

Columnist Frank Rich asked in Sunday’s New York Times opinion piece, “Is Obama Punking us?”

Hopefully he isn’t.

Paying for healthcare: It's easy: put single payer back on the table

At his news conference on July 22, Obama said that health insurance reform is central to rebuilding the economy. He pointed out that 14,000 Americans lose their health insurance every single day. One of the reasons Americans lose their health care is because the insurance industry doesn't want to pay for it.

For example, take the practice of rescission. When a customer -- a paying customer, someone who has been paying their premiums all along -- gets sick and makes a claim, health insurance companies employ people (or computers) to search their records and see if their are any pre-existing conditions that could disqualify them from coverage. The pre-existing condition could be something as simple as teenage bout with acne, which has nothing to do with say, cancer, but oops, you neglected to tell them about it? You and your cancer treatment are on your own.

This LA Times article documents how Blue Cross of California encouraged employees to cancel the health insurance policies of customers with expensive illnesses.

Former Cigna executive Wendell Potter testified before the Senate Commerce committee in June and said that insurance companies try to "confuse their customers and dump the sick so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors with big profits."

Potter told the Senators on the committee, including several Democratic senators who are opposing a public option, which could compete with the private insurance companies and keep them honest, as Obama has put it:

"I know from personal experience that members of Congress and the public have good reason to question the honesty and trustworthiness of the insurance industry. Insurers make promises they have no intention of keeping, they flout regulations designed to protect consumers, and they make it nearly impossible to understand--or even to obtain--information we need. As you hold hearings and discuss legislative proposals over the coming weeks, I encourage you to look very closely at the role for-profit insurance companies play in making our health care system both the most expensive and one of the most dysfunctional in the world." (You can read the transcript of his testimony here.)

You can also watch this video of CEO's from Well Point, Inc., United Health Group and Assurant, Inc., "refusing to stop screwing their customers" while testifying before Congress (H/T blogger dday at dailykos).

The United States now devotes one-sixth of it's economy to health care. Health insurance costs are on average about $15,000 per year for a family of four, about $6,500 more than in other advanced countries, according to The New York Times, and yet we are ranked 37 by the World Health Organization for health care outcomes.

A CBS NEWS/New York Times Poll indicates that 72% of Americans want a government-sponsored health care plan to compete with private insurance. According to that poll most believe that the government would do a better job than private insurance in keeping costs down.

At the press conference on Wednesday, Obama said this about the need for health care reform:

This is not just about the 47 million Americans who have no health insurance. Reform is about every American who has ever feared that they may lose their coverage if they become too sick, or lose their job, or change their job. It's about every small business that has been forced to lay off employees or cut back on their coverage because it became too expensive. And it's about the fact that the biggest driving force behind our federal deficit is the skyrocketing cost of Medicare and Medicaid.

Yet surprisingly, members of his own party are opposing him on health care.

The Democrats took single payer health care off the table from the beginning. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), the powerful chairman of the Senate Finance committee, one of two Senate committees charged with producing a health care bill, said he now regrets taking single payer off off the table, but that it is too late to do anything about it.

Baucus has been lobbied heavily by the health care industry and has emerged as a leading recipient of Senate campaign contributions,"from the hospitals, insurers and other medical interest groups hoping to shape the legislation to their advantage" according to an article in Washington Post According to one Senate aide "It's a parade of lobbyists going in and out of that office every day."


And Democrats -- not just Republicans, in both the House and the Senate that are coming out in opposition to even a public option, in spite of the fact that they ran in 2008 on a party platform of "guaranteed" access to affordable health care.

Single payer would go a long way toward solving the problem of high health care costs. But the health insurance industry is pouring millions of dollars into the campaign coffers of conservative Democrats who think it's more important to protect their interests than the interests of the American people.

Congressman John Conyers, speaking at the National Press Club on July 24 had this to say about the single-payer option:

"We are the richest country in the world and our doctors and medical facilities are the envy of our neighbors. Yet, our broken private insurance system burdens our business community and allows many of our fellow citizens to suffer or die unnecessarily. Two-thirds of our nation's personal bankruptcies can be attributed directly to medical expenses. A single payer system will allow us to cover everyone without spending any more money than we do now.

Conyers has been a long-time advocate of single-payer national health insurance reform and his bill (H.R.676) has 80 co-sponsors. You read about HR676 at http://www.johnconyers.com/hr676faq .