The California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee put out a simple call for a petition last week, demanding access for our patients to CheneyCare, the guaranteed, non-profit, quality healthcare available to Dick Cheney.  (Sign up if you haven’t already.)

What we didn’t expect was the hundreds of people who would write in with their stories of abuse at the hands of the insurance corporations.  This is a heart-breaking window into the pain and heartache that insurers inflict on America.  And now ABX11 would require everyone to purchase insurance products from these same corporations who are already ripping people off?  That’s nuts.

…cross-posted at the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association’s Breakroom Blog, as we organize for GUARANTEED healthcare on the single-payer model.

What’s happening out there in the wide wide world of guaranteed healthcare reform…

The California Nurses Association is working to end ABX1 1, the “fake” healthcare reform proposal floating around Sacramento.  That bill was crafted by insurers and features an “individual mandate’–wonk talk for a law forcing people to purchase expensive insurance products no matter their cost or quality. Read all about it here.

On the national level, Barack Obama is launching an ad to spread the word about his healthcare plan.  His plan’s not perfect-he avoids universal, single-payer coverage-but he pledges to oppose the individual mandate scam that’s being pushed by Romney, Schwarzenegger, Clinton, et al.  That’s a good first step.  (For the record, CNA/NNOC has made no endorsement.)

Elswhere, Ian Welsh looks at the recent article finding that 100,000 Americans die each year due to our deficient healthcare system.  That’s 100,000 victims of the health insurance industry.  He writes:

So choose whether you support single payer health care. But remember that in making that choice you are making a profound statement about what you consider important – free market ideology or saving lives and pain – and that single payor healthcare has been proven to actually be cheaper than the current system. Immoral and impractical – all in one.

Finally, the Rutland Herald in Vermont thinks single-payer “may be upon us sooner than we think” and  The Time Goes By blog wants to sign up for CheneyCare.

Howdy all,

Just want to let you know about our new radio ad campaign against the fake healthcare reform bill.  It will be running statewide throughout January, as the Senate considers whether to weigh in on the side of patients or the big insurance corps.

It’s based on the very interesting parallels between the national debate and the California debate for healthcare.  Like the proposals of some politicians nationally, both Republican and Democratic, the Schwarzenegger-Nunez deal has at its heart an individual mandate.

The ad quotes Sen. Obama noting “some folks who said that it’s not possible to provide universal health care coverage unless there’s a mandate._ Their essential argument is the only way to get everybody covered is if the government forces you to buy health insurance. If you don’t buy it, then you’ll be penalized in some way….The reason people don’t have health insurance is because they can’t afford it.”

Under the Schwarzenegger-Nunez deal, ABX1.1, insurers would gain millions of new customers and hundreds of millions in additional profits while failing in its promise of solving the state’s healthcare crisis, says CNA/NNOC.  Supporters of the bill include seven of the state’s biggest insurers: Kaiser Permanente, Health Net, PacifiCare, Blue Shield, Cigna, and Molina Health Care–for very obvious reasons.

“Individual mandates are not a humane or sound health care policy. Californians desperately want real healthcare reform, but AB x11 is not it,” said Zenei Cortez, RN, a member of the CNA/NNOC Council of Presidents.   “Sadly, AB x11 is a prescription for more financial risk, denial of care, and heartache for California patients.  As patient advocates, RNs will continue working to defeat ABX1.1.”

The ad also calls on Californians to join with nurses in working for genuine healthcare reform, such as SB 840, a bill that will be heard in the California Assembly later this year. The ad may also be heard at www.guaranteedhealthcare.org

The full text of the ad reads:

(voice over) The nurses of California agree with Senator Barack Obama: the government shouldn’t punish people who can’t afford health insurance. _

(Sen. Obama) I know that there have been some folks who said that it’s not possible to provide universal health care coverage unless there’s a mandate._ Their essential argument is the only way to get everybody covered is if the government forces you to buy health insurance. If you don’t buy it, then you_ll be penalized in some way. _And the reason people don’t have health insurance is because they can’t afford it.

(voice over) So why are Gov. Schwarzenegger and Assembly Speaker Nunez proposing a law, AB x 11, to force you to buy insurance which would pad the pockets of the insurance companies? AB x 11 is not the path to the universal healthcare we so desperately need. Don’t let the politicians force you to buy insurance you can’t afford and which won’t help you when you’re sick.

Join California nurses in calling for real healthcare reform.

Go to guaranteedhealthcare.org.

Paid for by the California Nurses Association which is responsible for the content of this ad. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

From Nataline Sarkisyan to Angela Dispenza to ten-year-old Preston, we all deserve the kind of care that Dick Cheney has.

Pre-existing condition?  No problem.  Guaranteed healthcare?  Of course.  Heartless insurance bureaucrats meddling in medical decisions?  No way.  A single standard of quality care?  Nothing less will do.  

But why just Cheney?  Why not everyone?

Want to sign up for it?

…cross-posted at the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association’s Breakroom Blog, as we organize for GUARANTEED healthcare on the single-payer model.

Activist nurses around the country are going to take the case for CheneyCare directly to the Presidential candidates this year-but we need your help.  Go sign up.  We’ll send nurses in scrubs to carry the petition on your behalf to every member of Congress and Presidential candidate from both parties.  Patients need to keep pressure on politicians to really fix the healthcare system and ensure guaranteed healthcare for all Americans.

Nurses are running ads about CheneyCare today in major newspapers across the country.  As the Presidential race swings into high gear, it’s time for the pateints’ revolt to match it, and display the kind of intensity and organization that will force the politicians to listen to us-and not the insurance donors.  It’s time for the patients’ revolt, and Dick Cheney, and the care he receives but we don’t, is the perfect symbol to make it happen.  Take a look at the full ad, today in the New York Times, Wall St. Journal, and USA Today.

In case you missed it, The Wall St. Journal noted:

Vice President Dick Cheney would “probably be dead by now” if not for his federally funded health care, according to an eye-catching ad calling for universal health care that will run…in newspapers. The ad is union-funded by the California Nurses Association and its national arm, the National Nurses Organizing Committee, which represents 75,000 nurses.

You know you’ve succeeded when this happens:

The vice president’s office said the ad isn’t worth more than a no comment. “Something this outrageous does not warrant a response,” said Megan Mitchell, a spokeswoman for Cheney.

We are building a grand coalition.  

And the insurance industry?  Well, who really likes them except for the politicians whose pockets they line?

(Tragically, the girl in question, Nataline Sarkisyan, died yesterday evening after this diary was posted. nyceve at Daily Kos has more about the netroots’ role in forcing CIGNA to capitulate. – promoted by Robert in Monterey)

I am pasting a release below about the Dec. 20 “Patient’s Revolt” that forced heartless CIGNA corporation to approve the liver transplant that could save the life of 17-year-old Nataline Sarkysian.

It’s been an emotional day involving hundreds of people, but there are a couple of lessons I want to take away.

First–we have power.  We shouldn’t be afraid to use it.  A unique coalition of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, a union, together with netroots and the Armenian Community shamed a global insurance corporation into doing the right thing.

Second–we shouldn’t have to do this…and every candidate pushing to mandate individuals purchase insurance products from the likes of CIGNA, who would still be in the business of profiting through the denial of care, should think long and hard.  Are the CIGNA’s of the world really the people who should control our healthcare dollars?

Here is the full release.  Highlights:

CIGNA CAPITULATES TO PATIENT REVOLT

Following Massive Protest, Insurer Authorizes

Transplant for 17-year-old Nataline Sarkysian

CNA/NNOC-Sponsored Protest Sparks Flood of Calls from Across U.S.

In a stunning turn-around, insurance giant Cigna has capitulated to community demands, and protests that the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee helped to generate, and agreed to a critically needed liver transplant for Nataline Sarkysian, a 17-year-old girl in the intensive care unit at UCLA Medical Center.

A national web of friends and family of Nataline, CNA/NNOC registered nurses, doctors, members of the Armenian community, healthcare advocates and netroots supporters pitched in on an unprecedented national day of action on Nataline’s belief.  

The centerpiece of the protests was an impassioned rally today sponsored by CNA/NNOC with the substantial help of the local Armenian community that drew 150 people to the Glendale offices of Cigna. Hundreds of phone callers clogged the lines of Cigna offices around the country, all demanding that Cigna reverse its prior denial of care.  

“This is an incredible turnaround generated by a massive outpouring around the country that proves that an enraged public can make a difference and achieve results,” said CNA/NNOC Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro. “Cigna had to back down in the face of a mobilized network of patient advocates and healthcare activists who would not take no for an answer.”

The netroot protest was organized by Eve Gittelson an influential health policy blogger who writes on Daily Kos as nyceve, and many of the calls were also the product of work by the Armenian National Committee.

“Natalie is now seriously ill and still has significant hurdles in her fight for her life, but thankfully our combined voices and protests have finally given her and her family hope,” said Geri Jenkins, RN, a member of the CNA/NNOC Council of Presidents who works in a transplant unit at the University of California San Diego Medical Center.

“However, it is deplorable and appalling that CIGNA needed to have hundreds of people pounding on their doors and besieging them with calls to take the humanitarian step they should have done long before today,” said Jenkins who spoke at the Glendale rally.

Nataline’s mother, Hilda Sarkisyan, expressed her profound thanks to CNA/NNOC. “We couldn’t have done this without you helping us to stand up against this insurance company and forcing them to finally do the right thing. It is not right in this country for it to take a rally, a protest, and a major press conference to get an insurance company to listen.”

“Every politician who thinks the answer to our healthcare crisis is more insurance should stop and think about Nataline Sarkysian,” said DeMoro. “Insurance is not care. Paying for insurance coverage is not the same as assuring you will receive appropriate care, even when recommended by a physician as it was for Nataline. Insurance corporations profit by denying care to the sick, and that is no way to run a humane healthcare system.”

DeMoro said that CNA/NNOC will continue to encourage patient protests and publicize stories about insurance companies’ denial of care, as it has all year through its www.guaranteedhealthcare.org web site, while pressing for real healthcare reform “that takes medical decisions out of the hands of insurers and places them where they belong, in the hands of healthcare professionals and their families.”

If we are ever going to get genuine healthcare reform, we need to make sure politicians listen to nurses-not insurance companies-on the issue.  

That’s why the all the energy among activist nurses around the country are such good news.

We’ll take a look at what’s up below …cross-posted at the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association’s Breakroom Blog, as we organize for GUARANTEED healthcare on the single-payer model

Starting in Nevada, RNs at St. Mary’s in Reno voted overwhelmingly to join the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee.  Go read that incredible story.  Joining CNA/NNOC will give these RNs, at long last, a statewide voice in pushing for guaranteed, single-payer healthcare, which is vital for Nevada.  It also helps CNA/NNOC continue its rapid national expansion, which gives us the ability to do this.

In our home state of California, 5000 RNs are striking today and tomorrow against the troubled healthcare giant Sutter, which is infamous for short-staffing its units, thereby endangering patients.  Fights for a safe ratio of nurses to patients is a key part of the larger fight for healthcare reform; in essence what it does is guarantee a minimum level of care for patients within hospitals.  (Along with an earlier strike in October against Sutter, these are the largest nurses’ strikes this nation has seen in a decade.)

Finally, great news for the movement for guaranteed, single-payer healthcare: Colorado has become the 29th state labor federation to endorse John Conyers’ HR 676 “Medicare for All” bill.  The labor movement is coalescing around single-payer healthcare, meaning it is the only reform proposal with an organized, motivated grassroots base working for its passage.  Who really gets excited by the idea of forcing every person to purchase expensive, wasteful insurance products from the very corporations who brought you the healthcare crisis?

One more irony about the healthcare crisis: the politicians in charge of fixing it…are guaranteed healthcare through a system that is not just “single-payer” (in terms of being financed by the government instead of insurance companies), but beyond is actually government-run.

Nurses are running ads today in 10 Iowa newspapers pointing out that this means that Dick Cheney, with his heart trouble, would probably be dead now if he were an ordinary American forced to search for cardiac care in a thicket of mercenary insurers and heartless HMOs.  Cheney gets guaranteed healthcare; we get squat.

We’ll take a look below, also at some recent highlights from the healthcare movement…cross-posted at the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association’s Breakroom Blog, as we organize for GUARANTEED healthcare on the single-payer model.

The Wall St. Journal notes:

Vice President Dick Cheney would “probably be dead by now” if not for his federally funded health care, according to an eye-catching ad calling for universal health care that will run Monday in ten Iowa newspapers. The ad is union-funded by the California Nurses Association and its national arm, the National Nurses Organizing Committee, which represents 75,000 nurses.

You know you’ve succeeded when this happens:

The vice president’s office said the ad isn’t worth more than a no comment. “Something this outrageous does not warrant a response,” said Megan Mitchell, a spokeswoman for Cheney.

MarketWatch noted that it is medical professionals who are giving the idea of guaranteed healthcare new life.

Among the good news this time, is that the American College of Physicians is calling for an examination of how a single-payer system would work in the U.S.  This is a great move forward for one of the nation’s premier organizations of Doctors.  

While health-care reform may play second fiddle to the war in Iraq among voters this election season, it appears that the domestic issue is taking on new life thanks to medical-industry professionals….Welcome to the 2008 elections, where medical professionals are turning up the heat in favor of a universal, single-payer system that represents a radical departure from what most of the major presidential candidates are proposing. They know that such a system is a long shot at this point, but the numbers in their camp are growing.

Elsewhere in the drive for guaranteed healthcare…

…I’m not sure who Brad Warthen is–he blogs for The State newspaper in South Carolina-but he’s become one of the most eloquent voices in support of genuine healthcare reform.

…The Charleston (West Virginia) Gazette continues its impassioned stumping for single-payer…

We are building a grand coalition.  Meanwhile, who really likes the insurance corporations except for the politicians whose pockets they line (to let them win office, and guaranteed healthcare).

While politicians debate individual mandates-a/k/a forcing Americans to purchase expensive, unworkable insurance products from the very corporations who brought you our healthcare disaster-more evidence rolls in about how Americans are being bankrupted by their health insurance.

…cross-posted at the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association’s Breakroom Blog, as we organize for GUARANTEED healthcare on the single-payer model.

Remember as you look at these stories that the big insurance companies take one-third of care dollars off the top, for profits, lobbying, CEO salaries, bureaucracy and overhead.  Medicare, America’s single-payer system, by contrast takes 3% off the top for all that.  Not even the mafia takes a third.

A new report today finds that in the last year health insurance costs rose ten percent.  Yes, that’s higher than the rate of medical inflation-meaning insurers are grabbing and keeping more money for themselves.  Imagine the financial impact if insurers can mandate those double-digit annual rises on every single patient, not just the ones they now cover.

The Wall St. Journal (sub. req’d) looks at Americans who get sick, and then go bankrupt when they bump up against their insurance caps.  Think you’re covered?  Think again!

The Journal cited a study, the Commonwealth Fund Biennial Health Insurance Survey, report that that 26% of Americans with health insurance had trouble paying medical bills in 2005 alone.  What did they do?

39% used up all their savings

28% covered it with credit cards

26% were unable to pay for basic necessities

11% took out a second mortgage or a loan

And THIS is the answer to our health care crisis?

From Iowa to California to Massachusetts, the national healthcare debates are finally starting to hit the key point: the problem of the health insurance corporations.  We’ll take a look below…cross-posted at the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association’s Breakroom Blog, as we organize for GUARANTEED healthcare on the single-payer model.

The key issue is being played out now on the Presidential campaign, in exchanges between Sens. Clinton and Obama.

Clinton (and Edwards, Romney, Schwarzenegger, etc.) supports the individual mandate, requiring every person to carry health insurance, most likely purchased from one of the huge insurance corporations that have been busily gutting out health care system for their own profits.  Obama is put into a difficult spot by charges that he doesn’t support “universal” care, but argues that the reason people don’t carry insurance is because they can’t afford-not, usually, that they don’t want it. 

Of course, both sides are ignoring the key point: every other industrialized democracy is successfully operating some version of a single-payer system; only we put insurance companies ahead of public health needs.  Nonetheless, it’s important to decide if we want to hand over more customers, influence, adn revenues to the same insurance corporations that are speedily wrecking our health care system.

Out in California, Schwarzenegger and the legislature is considering their own mandates, cheered on lustily by insurance donors greedy for more profits.  One key problem? 

public health officials who provide most of the care for millions of uninsured residents are increasingly concerned that the proposed system could leave big financial holes in the state’s safety net.

Which only makes sense…if you channel billions in public subsidies to insurance corporations, and guarantee their profits, of course the public health systems take a huge financial hit.  That’s where the money comes from. 

The good news for Californians?  A deeply-divided state government might just make this harmful “reform” impossible to pass.

Meanwhile, kids in California are about to start getting dropped from the public rolls, while the politicians debate their plan for insurance company subsidies.  Unvelievable.

Massachusetts is starting to experience the problems with its own mandate experiment.  Short answer: only people who get subsidized insurance are signing up, while the insurance corporations are gleefully jacking up rates 10 to 12 per cent a year on everyone else. 

Finally did you catch NYCEve taking on the NYT editorial board?  Wow.