Guaranteed Healthcare

All across the nation, our allies in the fight to extend a progressively financed, single standard of high quality care for all are holding events to celebrate the 45th anniversary of Medicare. Four more than four decades, Medicare has helped millions of Americans protect their health and their wealth during retirement and during disability – the poverty level among the elderly dropped significantly in the years following the passage of Medicare. (READ MORE and TAKE ACTION!)

New census data released Tuesday confirm a huge spread in the rate of uninsured from state to state and the big difference in impact that can be expected as a result of the health-care overhaul recently passed by Congress.  

By Lena H. Sun
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 28, 2010

All insurers are required to set aside a certain portion of premiums for future claims that have not yet occurred and/or not yet reported over the expected term of the policy. Back in April I wondered if insurers were shifting some of their earnings into reserves in order to inflate their medical loss ratios — which measures the percentage of premiums that are actually spent on medical care — and keep their reported profits artificially low (remember, they keep insisting that insurer profit makes up just 4% of national health care spending).

Think Progress
By Igor Volsky

The legislative battle over the health care overhaul ended months ago, but it is hard to tell from the intense effort now under way by insurance companies to retool a critical provision.

The New York Times
By REED ABELSON

Speaking for Controlled Healthcare Insurance Corp., the incomparable Ernestine tells a patient, “Life itself is a pre-existing condition. Our prescription for it: Don’t get sick!” That’s the only way to stay ahead of the insurance companies who’s only concern is profits. As Ernestine says, “It takes big bucks to run an insurance company, medical care is the least of it.”

Ed Asner explains what your health care premiums pay for–and a lot of it’s not health care. About 30% goes to paperwork, advertising, lobbyists, obscene executive salaries, and profiteering. That’s why we need single payer, California OneCare.

Deborah Burger, President of the 85,000-member California Nurses Association, says that their research has shown that a single payer health care system would stimulate the economy and create jobs. And it would mean that patient care would be nurses’ first priority. That’s why they support California OneCare.

The nation’s largest union and professional organization of registered nurses, National Nurses United, today joined the national condemnation of Anthem Blue Cross for imposing rate hikes of up to 39 percent for Californians with individual policies, but said the outrage must “go beyond words to action to end insurance abuses once and for all.”

New Energy for Healthcare Reform After National Bills Stall

To ecstatic applause from healthcare advocates, the California Senate today breathed new life into national prospects for fundamental health reform by passing on a 22 to 14 vote a major bill to guarantee healthcare in the state through creating a Medicare for all system that would cover every Californian. 

Sen. Bernie Sanders outlines the case for single payer/Medicare for all on the Senate floor, following withdrawal of his single payer amendment due to parliamentary maneuvers by Republican opponents.

• Click here for the C-SPAN video clip

The idea of a Medicare for All type, single-payer healthcare system will be heard on the Senate floor.  Late last evening, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont filed Senate Amendment No. 2837, and there are two additional original co-sponsors of this amendment, Senator Roland Burris of Illinois and Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio.

Does passage of a bill that funnels millions of additional Americans into the private insurance system, and the decision of House leaders to shut down debate on one single payer amendment and scuttle another, mean the end of the years of efforts by single payer activists to win the most comprehensive reform of all?

Your calls are needed to keep single payer amendments alive in the U.S. House of Representatives. The message is simple: Keep the Kucinich Amendment!

• Speaker Nancy Pelosi:
  DC 202.225.4965 - SF 415.556.4862

• Representative George Miller:
  DC 202.225.2095 - Concord 925.602.1880
  
• Representative Henry Waxman:
  DC 202.225.3976 - LA 323.651.1040
  

How many horror stories will it take before Congress decides to act on the most ignored problem in the present healthcare debate, denials for people with insurance? In September, San Francisco's KPIX-TV reported the story of Rosalinda Miran-Ramirez of Daly City, who woke up one April morning with her left breast bleeding and her shirt soaked in blood.

Bob Schieffer of Washington Unplugged interviews Donna Smith, of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Ogranizing Committee, who was a featured patient in the Michael Moore movie SiCKO, and Robert Zerkilbach of America's Health Insurance Plan (AHIP) about a new report of insurance claim denials.  
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