Guaranteed Healthcare

After listening to John McPalin last night, the new morning does not bring relief from the frightening possibility that team Palin/McCain could (God forbid) end up in the White House.

Even worse, each day continues the avalanche of terrible news on the healthcare front.

Here are a few items that caught my attention.

Gas prices confine sick people

Sick Americans who travel far or frequently to get medical treatment are skipping or delaying appointments, leaving support groups and applying for grants to defray high gasoline prices.

People who visit the doctor multiple times each week or month, such as cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy and people needing dialysis, have been hardest hit.

And equally alarming. As the economy worsens and more  Americans find themselves out of work, and barely surviving, health care costs are set to surge higher. Those still employed, will pay more and get less. Higher deductibles, higher co-pays which of course, will result in far less healthcare, and far less access to healthcare. 

Many Americans who are self-employed and must fend for themselves in the merciless individual market, will find themselves on the receiving end of a new round of unaffordable premium hikes. You can count on an uptick in the number of Americans no longer able to afford private insurance, so we'll be adding many more to the ranks of the uninsured and underinsured.

Study: Workers to pay more for health care

Get ready for another hike in copays and deductibles. A survey being released Thursday by the Mercer consulting firm found 59 percent of companies intend to keep down rising health care costs in 2009 by raising workers' deductibles, copays or out-of-pocket spending limits.

On average, health care costs will go up by an estimated 5.7 percent next year for both workers and their employers, the study found. That repeats this year's 5.7 percent hike and a 6.1 percent jump in 2007.

So what's the for-profit insurance industry to do during such terrible economic times?  The criminal CEO of Wellpoint is trying to figure out how to balance the profit needs of Wall Street against the loss of paying victims policy holders.

I'll leave you with the assault by the insurance industry against America's most vulnerable, our senior citizens.

Auditors: Drug marketing falls short

About 85 percent of the marketing materials that private insurers use for their prescription drug plans fail to meet all of Medicare's guidelines for those products, federal auditors said Thursday.

The marketing products include enrollment applications for the Medicare drug benefit or explanations of a plan's benefits and rules. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has dozens of requirements for how the information is supposed to be presented to the elderly and disabled. Auditors found that the materials routinely violated one or more of those requirements.

"It's unconscionable that CMS has let the insurance industry's materials including essential items like pharmacy directories and summaries of benefits fail to properly inform seniors 85 percent of the time," said Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

And keep in mind as the campaign moves into high gear, that even Barack Obama intends to leave these criminal companies directly in the center of his health care reform plan. This is unacceptable and he knows it.

Max Baucus is another huge problem. He's a Democrat, but stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the insurance industry which showers him with staggering amounts of money.