Guaranteed Healthcare

With the final White House Forum on healthcare scheduled Monday, April 6 in downtown Los Angeles, advocates of single payer/guaranteed healthcare have one more opportunity to shake up what has become a dreary conventional wisdom about the presumed acceptable parameters of the debate.

Hundreds of nurses, doctors, healthcare and labor activists will rally at 9 a.m. outside the California Endowment, 1000 North Alameda St., Los Angeles.

It will mark the fifth time, at all five White House regional forums, that the single payer/Medicare for all message will come to the stage, outside and inside the forum.  You can extend that to the town hall meeting at the White House last week where the President was asked why we can't have a national healthcare system like they have in other industrialized nations.

Haven't we heard this song before? It sure looks like the people who already control our healthcare system are framing the biggest issues of the present healthcare reform debate.

From the back rooms to the committee hearings to the White House summits to the front pages of the newspapers, the demands of the insurance industry are given enormous deference and accommodation.

Is it fear of Harry and Louise, the insurance campaign that some believe torpedoed the muddled Clinton health proposal? Is it the considerable influence of insurance industry contributions in the pockets of many legislators?

I am an official (dare I say, proud?) member of Casualty of the Day.

I received my health insurance premium renewal  extortion notice.  They've hit me with an 18.5% increase.

My current monthly premium is $629.83 per month, the renewal notice is $746.30. This represents right around an 18-18.5% increase. They expect me to pay $8955.60 a year for junk insurance.

What makes this assault so deadly, is that we are in the midst of a huge recession, wages are declining, people are losing their jobs and of course, their employer-provided health insurance.

I have a vision though. Armies of desperately sick Americans descending on Congressional offices and emergency rooms across America, pleading for medical care. We are heading over a financial cliff and into a healthcare Armageddon. This is not hyperbole, it is reality.

There are several healthcare horror stories which should cause Americans across the nation to lose their collective appetites.

Today you'll read about a stranger, tomorrow the collpase of the U.S. healthcare system  will have landed on  you or someone you love. Make no mistake, it's only a matter of time before you, yes, you, will be face-to-face with our wrecked healthcare system.

How's this for catastrophe?  Americans, make that insured Americans forgoing cancer care because of the cost.  Yup, this is what's being reported in USA Today.  You pay for junk insurance. You forgo so many of lifes small pleasure to be able to pony up month after month. You assume if you need it, it will be there for you. Think again.

Study: Many cancer patients forgoing care because of cost

At a time when they're already fighting for their lives, more cancer patients are now struggling to pay for their medicines.

One in eight people with advanced cancer turned down recommended care because of the cost, according to a new analysis from Thomson Reuters, which provides news and business information. Among patients with incomes under $40,000, one in four in advanced stages of the disease refused treatment.

And it's only going to get worse. Much worse.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that employees will see vastly higher out-of-pocket costs as employers attempt, in the face of shrply escaling costs to maintain some semblance of junk insurance. You'll be paying more, lots more.

As companies head into open-enrollment season, when they let employees pick their plans for next year, many firms say they are reluctant to boost health-care premiums too sharply at a time when wages are stagnant. Instead, workers can expect to pay significantly more for such out-of-pocket items as deductibles, co-payments and other fees.

Employees' charges next year are expected to jump 10.1% from 2008, to an average of $1,880, according to a recent projection by Hewitt Associates, a benefits consulting firm. By contrast, health-care premiums are expected to rise 7.8%, after posting double-digit percentage gains in four of the last five years. In 2008, out-of-pocket costs also increased 10.1%.

. . .

Lauralee Schiraga, a nurse from Brewster, Mass., says she was surprised when she was billed $250 last month for a breast biopsy that had been done to check on a suspicious mass. Around the same time, she got another $250 charge, this time for an endoscopy ordered by her doctor after she had digestive problems. She called her health insurer and was told the bills were her co-payments for the out-patient procedures.

By Donna Smith

CHICAGO – If you think the companies that collect your health insurance premiums and pay your health care claims have been insulated from the economic crisis, think again.  And if you think the health insurance industry that is suffering right alongside the financial services industry isn’t going to need a bail-out too, think yet again.  Only the bail-out we will give the health insurance industry will be much more insidious and potentially far more dangerous to us all.

I wanted to inform myself about the stock performance of the big boys in the for-profit health insurance market, and here’s what I found this morning on Business Week’s website:

Stock performance, over the past month:

Aetna --  down 25.03%

CIGNA – down 23.15 %

Wellpoint – down 20.59%

In fact, I couldn’t find one health insurance company traded on the stock exchange that looked very healthy right now. 

The video you've just watched is an American tragedy.

A citizen of the richest country on the planet, evidently an immigrant from Spain, asking John McPalin why she was compelled to bring her ill relative, a "so-called uninsurable", home to Spain to die?

And McPalin's rambling, disjointed and utterly pathetic response.

The traditional media didn't see fit to make these chilling remarks public.  You should do yourself a favor and look at the man  shameless con artist who hopes he can lie and three card monte his way into becoming the 44th President of the United States.

1.0  INTRODUCTION

This Plan contains the following major points:

·         Makes health care available and affordable to ALL THE PEOPLE.

·         Medical SERVICE PROVIDERS are always PAID.

·         Very low cost to those who stay healthy.

·         Removes the fear of financial ruin due to catastrophic health care costs.

·         Removes pre-existing conditions.

·         Automatically adjusts to a change in a Person's economic condition.

·         Allows deferred payments in time of crisis.

·         Radically changes Federal health care programs. (Replaces most of MEDICARE.)

·         Radically changes the role of employers in regard to providing health care for their employees.

·         Designed for “USE BUT NOT ABUSE”.

·         Distinctly defines government’s role.

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.

Would someone wake me when it's over?

You can't make this stuff up.

John Goodman, the architect of McMoron's healthcare "plan" had this to say today regarding the news that Texas leads the nation in the number of uninsured.

But the numbers are misleading, said John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a right-leaning Dallas-based think tank. Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain's health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)

"So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime," Mr. Goodman said. "The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.

"So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved."

I (that's me, nyceve) have nothing to add except. . .

God help us.

Who wouldn't walk to the end of the earth linked arm-in-arm with this great American?

Senator Kennedy has devoted his life to fighting for the American people. His simple idea is to bring guaranteed affordable, cradle to grave healthcare to all of us.

He never shies away from shaming his seemingly shameless colleagues who eagerly accept heavily taxpayer subsidized healthcare benefits while denying you and me--the American people what they have.

Always remember the Little Pink Card given on on Day One to every member of the United States Senate.

His candor is utterly refreshing.

Save for Sherrod Brown of Ohio, all 99 members of the United States Senate eagerly accept taxpayer subsidized health benefits.

Kennedy's favorite line which he repeats at every opportunity is, "the American taxpayer is paying 72% of the healthcare premium for every member of the United States Senate."

It's long overdue that this taxpayer generosity be ended. Each member of the U.S. Senate should be forced into the merciless for-profit individual market. They should experience the depraved world of pre-existing conditions, exclusions, waiting periods and denials,  the same grim reality as so many of the people they represent.