Posts tagged ‘insurance’

Everybody In, Nobody Out: Single-payer rally on Capitol Hill

by , posted on Sunday, August 2nd, 2009 at 9:27 pm

Last Thursday was probably the hottest and most humid day of the summer so far in Washington, DC, and yet several hundred health care reform activists, brought together by the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care, stuck it out in the heat to rally and lobby for single-payer. It was the 44th anniversary of the

passage of Medicare and the day began with the delivery of Medicare birthday cupcakes and cards to congressional offices. Later in the day activists met with their representatives to lobby for single-payer. And in between a rally was held in Upper Senate Park, just across the street from the Capitol. The remarks of several of the speakers and photos from the rally follow.

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nyceve and Jane Hamsher’s health care briefing on Capitol Hill

by , posted on Monday, July 13th, 2009 at 12:07 am

Last Wednesday, July 8th, Rep. John Conyers’ office brought Eve Gittelson, aka “nyceve,” a leading blogger on health care issues at Daily Kos, and Jane Hamsher, founder of the blog FireDogLake, to Capitol Hill to present a briefing on health care to congressional staff.

More specifically, as Conyers legislative assistant Joel Segal put it, Eve was there to “talk about her perspective as a blogger. What she hears day in, day out, from people about what they want to see in a

national health insurance program. What are their concerns, what are their problems?” And Jane was there to discuss organizing strategies, what she thinks the American people want, and what the role of congressional staff and Members of Congress is in putting a good bill through. She was also there to talk about a project she’s engaged in, seeking to get forty members of Congress to go on record on video saying that if there’s no public plan like Medicare, then there will be no health care reform this year.

Rep. Conyers himself joined the briefing as well, leading a Q&A session that turned into an initial planning session for a prospective hearing on the health care crisis, perhaps to be held on Capitol Hill during in August recess.

Eve and Jane’s remarks, as well as more on the Q&A session, after the jump.

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Bill Foster signals support for a strong public option

by , posted on Sunday, July 12th, 2009 at 1:58 am

In a move that surprised me (because I’ve been having an ongoing conversation with his spokesperson Shannon O’Brien and have been unable to get a definitive answer) Bill Foster signalled his support for a strong public option, without triggers, when he signed a letter from 22 members of the New Democrat and Blue Dog coalitions to Nancy Pelosi last Wednesday.

A copy of the letter is posted here on Firedoglake.

There’s more…

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The current health profit system is a rigged roulette wheel that you can never break even on although you don’t know it because until you lose you think you can win.

by , posted on Thursday, July 9th, 2009 at 1:24 pm

I made the following analogy about a month ago and it seems to really help people understand…

The current health profit system is a rigged roulette wheel that you can never break even on although you don’t know it because until you lose you think you can win.

Since no one else sees each individual playing and understands the rates of payment denials, everyone else keeps playing and saying it’s fair. No one else realizes that when you hit on the wheel and need care that the house tells you you aren’t covered so everyone else keeps playing the game thinking they are safe and will be paid if they hit and need payment of bills.

The fact is currently they don’t even let you play if you show signs of possibly hitting on the wheel before you start (preexisting conditions). Then if they let you play and you pay on the wheel over and over in premiums and you then get sick and need payoffs, They reexamine your entrance preexisting conditions and attempt to deny you a payoff if they can.

Then if that doesn’t work they tell you that you won’t get all the payoff you thought you were covered for when they sold you on playing their roulette wheel and so they leave you in thousands of dollars of debt in uncovered bills.

No one would play a rigged roulette wheel like that if those disclosures were made up front.

Why should anyone accept a rigged health profit system like that?

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How I lost my health insurance at the hairstylist’s

by , posted on Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 at 10:35 pm

So you’re chugging along doing all the things you do as a responsible citizen, you work, and pay your bills and your taxes, you are there for your children, and fighting for your marriage, you even volunteer. It’s spring, 1998, and gradually you just become so tired it’s a struggle merely to climb a flight of stairs.

Oh, well, you do have two daughters in college, another nearing the end of her senior year in high school, a son in middle school, a full-time job, a house to take care of, are back in college, and have two dogs, two cats, and oodles and oodles of marital strain.

Fatigue sort of goes with the territory, and like many working moms, you just push past it. You get up, you get the family off in various directions, you go to work, you go to class, you cook dinner, you help with homework, go to games and track meets, do housework, set boundaries for the two kids at home and field frequent counseling-like calls from the two who are not, you try to work through problems with your husband, and you collapse exhausted into bed, get up the next day, and do it all over again – it’s a routine you dare not interrupt with reflections on your fatigue – there is no time.

Then one day…

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7:00 a.m. phone calls, domestic terrorists & human bellwethers

by , posted on Monday, July 6th, 2009 at 8:16 am

I’m usually too asleep to retain much that my daughter Kate says to me during her daily 7:00 a.m. phone call, but this morning she woke me up.

In the midst of discussing whether her husband may need minor surgery, she said “every time I think about health care now, I just get mad.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, just that we’re well on the way to ending up with a situation where everyone who’s uninsured now is going to be forced to go out and buy some junk policy at a currency exchange, just like poor people do now with car insurance, that won’t cover a thing but will keep them from getting arrested. So lots of cash to insurance companies and no services in return. Worst of all, it’s just going to be massively expensive and in four years we’ll end up with Republicans campaigning on the ‘waste’ and ‘failure’ of our ‘socialist’ healtcare system. And they’ll be right – except for the socialist part – because what congress is currently cooking up is only going to help the people who’ve been trying to kill us – I know, I used to work for big insurance.”

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Drive-Through Care

by , posted on Wednesday, May 20th, 2009 at 10:51 am

I received an e-mail this morning from a friend who is a breast-cancer survivor and a person I admire beyond my ability to describe. She requested that I sign a petition to help stop drive-through mastectomy.

The text of the e-mail is copied below – please follow the link and sign the petition. This sort of “cost control” is inhumane – and a prime example of why we – the wealthiest nation on earth – rank 37th in health care, well after much poorer nations like Morocco, Costa Rica, and Columbia and certainly after every single other industrialized nation. And it isn’t me who says so – it’s WHO.

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A Tale of Two Health Care Systems

by , posted on Sunday, May 17th, 2009 at 6:13 pm

First, an apology – I’ve been incredibly busy since this blog launched, mostly living as a road warrior for work, but also providing necessary grandmotherly support for the birth of not one, but two, new grandchildren. Jane Danger, who arrived in this world at about the same time this blog did, and Joseph (aka “Joe-normous”) who appeared exactly one month later. So since January 1 or so, if I haven’t been hanging out helping their Moms – my daughters – I’ve been on the road in Michigan, Iowa, Oregon, wherever, for work. All of which means I’ve spent about a grand total of ten minutes a day on-line since January 1 – hardly the most efficient way to launch a new blog – so my apologies to those who’ve been checking in and finding me absent.

Which leads me to my “followers,” or in this case my Twitter followers. There aren’t really that many. I think I’ve spent about ten minutes total on Twitter in my life, and don’t think I’ve even uttered a tweet yet, but there are a few followers – mostly people I know. One I picked up very recently particularly caught my attention, considering the juxtaposition between said follower’s occupation and what was going on in my real life at the time.

So follow me, if you dare (and have a fair piece of time to spend – this will be loooonnnng) into the Tale of Two Health Care Systems.

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Today I am a Healthcare Voter: a personal rant

by , posted on Thursday, August 30th, 2007 at 4:33 pm

Originally posted at Daily Kos.

In case anyone is unaware, I want to state for the record that I worked for the Laesch for Congress campaign in ’06, I work for it now, I will work for it in future. But this diary is a personal story, not vetted by the campaign, although also an explanation of why, in fact, I started working for the election of John Laesch as my congressperson in the first place, why I’m probably going to drop in an ActBlue link in the end anyway, as well as why I am, oh, pissed off at the world today.  Again.

Today Kate’s life is in danger.  Again.

Kate is my late-twenty-something youngest daughter.  She is herself the mother of two, my only grandchildren.  Kate is smart, witty, charming, creative, funny, willful, stubborn, disorganized, proud, courageous, kind, and a free-spirit if ever there was one.  I mention these things because, like most people with a chronic illness, she hates being defined by it so I don’t want it to be the only thing I say about her here, but Kate has Type I Diabetes.

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