Tag: insurance

Crossposted at Daily Kos

    Senate negotiators have decided not to include a provision revoking the insurance industry’s anti-trust exemption in the bill leadership sends to the floor, said a Democratic aide close to the merger talks. Instead, the measure will be offered as an amendment on the Senate floor.

HuffingtonPost.com

Bold and italics added by the diarist

    The House bill will have language ending the Insurance cartels anti-trust exemption. Why won’t the Senate bill have similar language in it before it is brought to the floor for debate?

    More below the fold

Yesterday, the U.S. Senate Finance Committee passed the Baucus health care bill.  

What a disappointment. No public health insurance plan. No universal coverage. No real price controls. Billions of taxpayer dollars for insurance companies.

Tell your members of Congress to support the best and simplest reform plan: Medicare for all.

After you take action, please help build the momentum for real health reform by telling 5 friends.

The U.S. health system has left 46 million Americans uninsured. [1]  45,000 people die every year due to lack of insurance. [2]  Insurance companies deny coverage to thousands more when they actually get sick. And insurance is simply too expensive for millions of people and businesses.

The Baucus bill solves none of those problems.  

By contrast, Medicare is so efficient that it could insure all Americans for the same amount of money that we now give to private corporations. [3]

Under such a single-payer system, you still get to choose your doctor… except without a profiteering insurance corporation standing between you and your health care.

Will you ask Congress to support real reform — in terms they can understand?

Yes! I’ll tell my members of Congress that I won’t support them unless they support Medicare for all.

Notes:

(1)  “Income, poverty and health insurance coverage in the United States: 2008.”  Census Bureau, September 10, 2009.

(2)  “Harvard study finds nearly 45,000 excess deaths annually linked to lack of health coverage.” Physicians for a National Health Program, September 18, 2009.

(3)  “Single payer system cost?” Physicians for a National Health Program.  

Crossposted at Daily Kos

    “Insurance executives don’t do this because they’re bad people; they do it because it’s profitable.”

President Obama – 9/9/09

     With all due respect, Mister President, I beg to disagree.

     Therefore, I submit this as evidence to the fact that Insurance Executives are in fact bad people, very, very bad people.

ThinkProgress.org

    As you can see, our 9/11 heroes who ran into the burning flames of the WTC and survived can be denied insurance because of their occupation. An expecting father can be denied health care insurance. He might as well be having the baby himself, in their opinions, and, if that were the case, they would still deny him coverage anyway.

    Therefore, I respectfully disagree with what you have said, President Obama. I understand why you said it, after all Insurance Execs are people too. At least, one must assume so.

    With all due respect, Mr. President, I appreciate your attempt to avoid demonizing anybody, even Insurance Executives, as I assume you do so for the sake of decency, President Obama, really, I do. I understand that it is beneath the office of the President to do so. I simply disagree with your statement, but with respect, of course.

    So I will say it for you.

    Not only are insurance execs bad people who do what they do for profit, they are clueless, heartless, greedy bastards who would let you die for a dollar. That is not just bad, I’d say it’s evil, but since you can’t say that, Mr. President, I will for you.

    Insurance Executives are EVIL, greedy, clueless, heartless leeches who would sooner watch your family die than lose a dollar of profit, profits that go to pay their big, fat salaries.

     More of the cold, hard Truth below the fold, and a call to action as well.

You know, for a party that has spent the last three decades cowering in Centrist fear at even the echo of a whisper of the word ‘tax’, and is so afraid of offending right wing civil libertarians that they don’t say peep when teabaggers bring loaded guns (including assault rifles) to Congressional Town Halls and Presidential rallies, I find it incredible that Congressional Democrats are seriously considering a massive government program that would soon force every American citizen and legal resident (but not illegals, ironically) to pay a substantial amount of discretionary income most of them don’t have directly to a large private insurance corporation. What’s worse, if people don’t it fork over, the government fines them even more money.

In this economy?  Pay those guys??  Or you’ll fine us?  For getting sick?

Are they nuts?

(Okay, now that I’ve gotten that out of my system.)

Look, before we pass something that has the potential to be perhaps the most unpopular US law since the Alien & Sedition Acts, don’t you think we really should have an open and honest debate about whether a universal health insurance mandate is actually such a good policy idea in the first place?

I was dogged with a sinus infection for 2 weeks. Yesterday, I had to fight to get care for it because providers tell you most of the time it is virus based and they cannot do anything about it. But I knew I was so sick. I even called a nurse before going in. She didn’t take any notes of our conversation. She said to come in. Then I had to start all over, and I decided to write it all down.

See more after the jump

Crossposted at Daily Kos

This might be the most thorough assesment of the Republican party, the media, The Religious Right, Michele Bachmann, Glenn Beck, you name it, Dan Savage nails it. In an interview with Keith Olbermann, Dan Savage lays the truth down, hashes it up for all to see and then serves it with a bag of chips and a cup of STFU for the GOP.

Dan Savage:     I really do think the Michelle Bachmanns of the world and the Glenn Becks of the world are actively and, consciously or subconsciously, trying to get, I’m just gonna say it, trying to get the President killed.

    Full transcript and my own take on the issues below the fold.

well, sort of … in a letter, at least …

msnbc.com

President Obama issued a public letter to Sens. Ted Kennedy and Max Baucus, the two Democrats seen as most key to the design of potential health-care legislation.

June 2, 2009

Dear Senator Kennedy and Senator Baucus:

[…]

In short, the status quo is broken, and pouring money into a broken system only perpetuates its inefficiencies. Doing nothing would only put our entire health care system at risk. Without meaningful reform, one fifth of our economy is projected to be tied up in our health care system in 10 years; millions more Americans are expected to go without insurance; and outside of what they are receiving for health care, workers are projected to see their take-home pay actually fall over time.

We simply cannot afford to postpone health care reform any longer.

[…]

I agree that we should create a health insurance exchange market where Americans can one-stop shop for a health care plan, compare benefits and prices, and choose the plan that’s best for them, in the same way that Members of Congress and their families can. None of these plans should deny coverage on the basis of a preexisting condition, and all of these plans should include an affordable basic benefit package that includes prevention, and protection against catastrophic costs. I strongly believe that Americans should have the choice of a public health insurance option operating alongside private plans. This will give them a better range of choices, make the health care market more competitive, and keep insurance companies honest.

[…]

Sincerely,

BARACK OBAMA

(emphasis added)

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com…

Strong Words, need to be followed up with Stronger Actions.

(kind an inconvenient time for a Presidential road trip, eh?)

    HMO’s, Big Pharma and other special interests have made America a place where getting sick equals getting poor for the massive majority of our citizens. While we struggle to pay for prescription medicine and health insurance that does not cover our needs, the wealth CEO’s and their political allies are fighting harder than ever to deny us the most basic of human rights, the right to see a doctor.

    Why? So they can make a bigger profit, of course.      

Health care is a human right. In my own definition of the progressive movement, I count that as a basic progressive principle.

For various reasons, from my own personal perspective, it is simply unacceptable to settle for anything less than true universal health care. Some of those various reasons are my experiences with health care in the United States, as well as those of my friends and family, some of whom have serious or chronic conditions.

In tonight’s EENR for Progress, we look at why we need universal health care, proposals for universal health care, and what progressives can do to achieve it.