(More deadly wrongdoings by the insurance industry… Now why do we let these folks decide the fates of our lives? – promoted by atdleft)

Kimberly Tuzzi can’t afford dialysis; she might just die instead.  We meet her today, and look at why she and others like her can’t afford healthcare: because drug companies spend $25 million a month on lobbying, hospital execs earn $10 million a year, and insurance corporations give bonuses for kicking sick people off the rolls.  It’s no wonder that health experts and nurses are calling for a humane, SinglePayer system to fix our national healthcare disgrace.

Brought to you by the National Nurses Organizing Committee as we organize to make 2007 the Year of SinglePayer Healthcare.

The sad thing about Kim’s story is how common it must be:

Kimberly Tuzzi may simply tell the doctor to make her comfortable while her body shuts down.

The 39-year-old Scranton woman believes her juvenile diabetes has ravaged her kidneys. She cannot afford tests to find out for sure, let alone pay for dialysis treatments if they confirm her fears….

“I am either so sick somebody has to drive me to the doctor’s office or take me to an emergency room, or I wait for it to pass. That’s how I get my health care,” she said.

When you’re fighting for your health, the last thing you want is to also be taking a faceless, powerful corporate bureaucracy dedicated to denying you care.  Kim Tuzzi’s story is one of the many tragedies that together make up our healthcare crisis.

For example, just today we also read that kids aren’t getting vaccines because drug companies keep raising the prices and that even the well-off are afraid that healthcare costs will destroy their retirement.

What’s so wrong here?  Why can’t anyone afford healthcare anymore?

Let’s see: the big drug companies are spending about $25 million per month lobbying…you’re paying for this in higher drug prices. 

And hospital chains are paying the CEOs ten million dollars a year…you’re paying for their boathouse.

You’re also paying bonuses to insurance bureaucrats who kick sick people off the rolls and helping fund “cost shifts” that are designed to ensure individuals not insurers pay for care. 

We’re wasting all this money on healthcare, and everybody’s getting a cut except for patients.  What are we gonna do?

There’s hope.  Read this:

“I am proposing the federal government as the single payer of health care in this country. Only the federal government has the ability to fund one large risk pool through a payroll deduction. As the single payer, the federal government could negotiate hospital and physician payments even more effectively than it does now with Medicare.

“A single pool of funds, collected and administered by the government, would expand Medicare and replace Medicaid, SCHIP (State Children’s Health Insurance Program), the VA health-care system, and private health insurance, including the health care aspect of Worker’s Compensation. … Also eliminated would be the tax credit – or subsidy – given to companies for providing health insurance to their employees. In other words, the current, inefficient patchwork of payment systems would disappear, to be replaced by one nationwide program available to every citizen.”

The writer was Robert Gumbiner, an M.D. and a pioneer of the controversial concept of managed care, which has been a vain attempt to reduce the soaring costs of the volatile for-profit health-care system. Gumbiner founded FHP, in California, one of the nation’s earliest and largest HMOs, which was swallowed up in a merger with PacifiCare 10 years ago.

And even something as traumatic as Hurricane Katrina can move along our national movement for SinglePayer healthcare and healthcare justice, as a Kentucky nurse eloquently writes in this article.

If you want to join the fight for single-payer healthcare, sign up with SinglePayer.com, a project of the National Nurses Organizing Committee.  You can share your story about surviving the healthcare industry here, and start contacting media here.

(Movin’ on up! – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

A re-invigorated national nurses labor movement considers SinglePayer healthcare to be the most important issue facing our country.  In todays’ SinglePayer update, nurses criticize Schwarzenegger’s attempt to increase health insurance industry profits, lead the fightback against Chicago’s devastating health cuts, and remain in the crosshairs of the Bush labor department.  Elsewhere in the movement for SinglePayer healthcare, Pennsylvania patients are going to have to deal with even-bigger healthcare insurance giants, the mouthpiece of corporate America pipes up for mandated insurance, and the Nation criticizes unions who get into bed with bad-boss Wal-Mart.

Brought to you by the National Nurses Organizing Committee as we organize to make 2007 the Year of SinglePayer Healthcare.

Nurses are ethically and professionally obligated to serve as patient advocates-a calling they take from the bedside to the statehouse.  Much of their bedside work goes unheralded, but as a national nurses labor movement has finally begun to emerge, their work at the statehouse is becoming ever more important.

In California, Kay McVay, President Emeritus of the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association, calls Arnold Schwarzenegger to task for proposing a “second-best” health plan that would require the average patient to shell out an unaffordable one-fourth of their income-in premiums and deductibles ALONE.  Can you afford to subsidize the insurers?  McVay notes:

A recent New York Times-CBS poll shows 64 percent of Americans believe the government should guarantee health insurance for all; 55 percent identified it as the top domestic priority for Congress and the president. In California, 60 percent favor a publicly funded universal health care system, like {California’s}SB840 and Medicare, over the current system. The public is ahead of the politicians and policy wonks.

Meanwhile, the Chicago machine continues its effort to protect their patronage jobs while cutting back healthcare.  Here is-no joke-the suggestion from the county’s health commissioner to immigrants: fly back to your home country and let your family care for you.  Chicago nurses are teaming up with immigrant rights activists to demand his resignation.  Read about it here and here.

The hospital industry and their allies in the White House have noticed this activism, and are gunning for nurses’ unions, attempting to divide and conquer RNs.  A new bill fights back against this tactic, which you might have first read about in coverage of a National Labor Relations Board decision known as Kentucky River.  Excellent coverage here by Nancy Scola.

Meanwhile our national healthcare nightmare drags on.  Pennsylvania customers will soon face an even more-behemoth insurance colossus attempting to deny them care.  Is this merger good for anyone?

Those same care-denying insurance corporations now have the the discredited Heritage Foundation pimping for them in Washington DC, and cheerleadering for the idea of forcing everyone to buy insurance from them.  Hmmmm…wonder where their funding comes from? 

Finally, The Nation criticizes labor groups who get into bed with Wal-Mart on the healthcare issue while ignoring the fact that Wal-Mart doesn’t care one bit about the health of their own employees.

If you want to join the fight for single-payer healthcare, sign up with SinglePayer.com, a project of the National Nurses Organizing Committee.  You can share your story about surviving the healthcare industry here, and start contacting media here.

(Another important update from the frontline…
When will we ever learn that this health care system is killing us? – promoted by atdleft)

Nathan Wilkes’ health insurance worked great-until his son was born with hemophilia.  Since then, he’s tasted the boot of a vindictive health insurance corporation angry that they’ve had to pay for the care they promise.  His employer’s premiums have gone up, his co-workers’ co-pays have gone up, and now they’re all avoiding going to the hospital.  Other carriers won’t touch him and his insurer put a million dollar annual cap on care-which Mr. Wilkes’ son Thomas will pass in a matter of months.  In his words, he’s become, “A canary in the coalmine of healthcare.”  His best option seems to be to divorce his wife so that she can be unemployed and eligible for Medicare.  His son is the face of our healthcare crisis. Today’s SinglePayer update also looks at nurses on the march in Texas, the fight for the soul of Louisiana’s healthcare system, and a new study showing healthcare “tax credits” don’t work.

Brought to you by the National Nurses Organizing Committee as we organize to make 2007 the Year of SinglePayer Healthcare.

Watch the heart-wrenching video:

This is how we organize our healthcare?  We put the insurance corporations in charge of it, when they have a legal obligation to care only about their own profits?

In the words of Mr. Wilkes:  “The only health proposal that doesn’t bankrupt families unfortunate enough to face a serious illness is a SinglePayer, national health plan.”

Mr. Wilkes’ story made him an advocate for single-payer healthcare, in the hopes that our care can be organized for the good of patients, not the profit of insurers.

Elsewhere, Texas nurses are on the march demanding support for a new law guaranteeing they only have to care for a safe number of patients at any given time.  The so-called safe RN-to-patient laws originated in California and are now up in legislatures across the country.

Meanwhile, a huge battle is raging over Louisiana healthcare.  Republican Senator David Vitter is leading the pushback against the Bush administration.  They want to take all the money that goes into the public health system, and instead use it to buy health insurance for one-third to one-half of the state’s uninsured population-who would likely find it hard to get to a hospital with the public system closed.  That clear?  Me neither. 

One problem with private insurance is that insurance corporations waste one-third of care dollars on overhead-as opposed to Medicare which only spends about 3% of care dollars on overhead.  Now we learn that “health coverage tax credits,” which are designed to get people to buy private insurance, ALSO waste one-third of THEIR care dollars.  So, one-third for the IRS, one-third for the insurer, one-third for patient care.  Do you think THAT is a good alternative to the SinglePayer systems working well around the world?  Me neither.

Finally, some great grass-roots coverage of the healthcare crisis in Connecticut.

If you want to join the fight for single-payer healthcare, sign up with SinglePayer.com, a project of the National Nurses Organizing Committee.  You can share your story about surviving the healthcare industry here, and start contacting media here.

(Insurance denied because they can’t cherry pick? B-R-O-K-E-N – promoted by blogswarm)

More than a healthcare crisis-this nation has a widespread health insurance crisis.  Just today, the LA Times reports that professional associations are increasingly shut out of the health insurance market because group purchasing doesn’t let insurers cherry pick the healthiest customers.  This comes on the heels of last week’s news that Blue Cross is being fined $1 million for illegally dumping patients off the rolls, a new look at how elderly patients are being fleeced by their mercenary insurers, and complaints from doctors that they spend more time fighting corporate denials of care than tending to their patients.  Given this health insurance crisis that demands a solution, it’s no wonder the Sacramento Bee comes close to endorsing the SinglePayer system, and doing away with these bad actors. 

Brought to you by the National Nurses Organizing Committee as we organize to make 2007 the Year of SinglePayer Healthcare.

The latest canary in the insurance coal mines are the professional associations that offer their members health insurnace.  As Lisa Girion of the LA Times, who has been on a tear lately, writes:

Health plans offered by professional associations were once havens for millions of people who couldn’t get coverage anywhere else. But as medical costs have soared, groups representing professions as varied as law and golf have been forced to stop offering the benefit or been dropped by insurers.

More than 8,000 people with coverage through the California Assn. of Realtors could be next if Blue Shield of California succeeds with its plan to cancel the group’s health coverage.

“It’s a real stab in the heart,” said Marcy Garber, 62, an Encino real estate agent whose history of breast cancer makes her an almost-certain reject if she seeks similar coverage on her own.

Why are the insurance companies leaving this market?  Because they can’t cherrypick customers:

Insurance carriers began pulling out of association markets about 10 years ago amid mandates requiring the groups – like employers – to offer coverage to all members who wanted to buy it, regardless of preexisting conditions. Unlike employers, however, who typically pick up the much of the premiums for employees, most associations do not share in the costs. Instead, they arrange for their members to purchase coverage at group, rather than individual, rates.

Another real estate agent, Hector Aguirre, 39, of Rancho Cucamonga, also thought the group’s coverage was safe. He pays nearly $1,000 a month for coverage for himself and his family. His wife has lupus and a daughter needs daily shots of an expensive growth hormone.

“I always thought it had more control and more pull because it’s such a huge umbrella under the whole California Assn. of Realtors,” Aguirre said.

Realtor Terry Lucoff, 60, of Malibu, who pays a monthly premium of more than $600, fears that if he loses his coverage he will be unable to obtain new coverage that will allow him to continue seeing his regular doctors because he has been diagnosed with a kidney condition.

“If they can do this to the California Realtors association, they can do it to anybody,” he said.

It is truly, grotesquely surreal that the American medical system is organized around and by huge corporations that only want to serve healthy customers, and that make money by denying the healthcare they are chartered to insure.

Is it any wonder everyone hates them?  But look, there’s more from the car-wreck that is our insurance market.

Girion again: 

Blue Cross of California “routinely” violated state law when it canceled individual health insurance coverage after policyholders got pregnant or sick, making no attempt to determine whether they did anything to merit such “harsh” treatment, according to a state investigation of practices that appear to be industrywide….

As a result of its unprecedented investigation, the Department of Managed Health Care on Thursday said that it had fined Blue Cross $1 million – an amount immediately criticized by canceled policyholders and consumer advocates as too small to matter to an insurer whose parent company, WellPoint Inc., earned $3.1 billion in profit last year on revenue of $57 billion.

Stunningly:

Regulators examined 90 randomly selected cases of policy cancellations – out of about 1,000 a year in California – and found violations in each one.

Insurance companies aren’t just abusing sick people; they’re abusing old people, too:

  Interviews by The New York Times and confidential depositions indicate that some long-term-care insurers have developed procedures that make it difficult – if not impossible – for policyholders to get paid. A review of more than 400 of the thousands of grievances and lawsuits filed in recent years shows elderly policyholders confronting unnecessary delays and overwhelming bureaucracies. In California alone, nearly one in every four long-term-care claims was denied in 2005, according to the state.

And now doctors are reporting that all the time they spend with insurance corporation bureaucrats harms their patients.

So, I ask all the politicians who are supporting insurance mandates: do we really want to force the entire nation to sign up with their heartless corporations?  Do want to increase their influence over the delivery of care in our health system?

The Sacramento Bee doesn’t think so–and kind-of/almost endorse SinglePayer healthcare as the way to deal with our sick health insurance market:

Blue Cross denies wrongdoing. That’s fine. There is a larger lesson here: This health insurance market, the one for individuals or families who don’t automatically get covered through their jobs, is sick. Insurers try to avoid covering people who need care. And many Californians avoid getting insurance until it is in their financial interest to do so. It’s a game, and the game must end somehow. That can only happen by blowing up the individual health insurance market that exists today and replacing it with something that makes more sense. And that can only happen with the California Legislature and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

There are two basic choices here when it comes to health insurance. One is to get rid of private health insurance altogether and replace it with a program in which the government directly pays doctors and hospitals to provide care. That’s known as single-payer. It is championed by some Democrats, but opposed by the governor. Single-payer isn’t a likely short-term compromise, but the more we look at this mess, single-payer seems to be an increasingly likely long-term solution because of the many ills of the private insurance market.

If you want to join the fight for single-payer healthcare, sign up with SinglePayer.com, a project of the National Nurses Organizing Committee.  You can share your story about surviving the healthcare industry here, and start contacting media here.

(More reporting from the front lines on what’s happening in health care – promoted by atdleft)

Bonnie Terry had a job, insurance, and a recent diagnosis of cancer.  Her story from there is one more of the millions of tragedies that make up what we call the healthcare crisis.  She lost her job, then her insurance, then her doctor, then her life.  Bonnie Terry was killed as much by her cancer as by a healthcare sector designed to maximize profits for private insurance companies and minimize care for sick people; that’s not healthcare-that’s murder by spreadsheet.  Also, we celebrate the accomplishments of a noted AIDS activist, learn more about the already out-of-control cost of the Massachusetts plan, cheer the medical students aiming to reverse the hateful policies of the American Medical Association, and read about an interfaith group of religious leaders calling for healthcare for all…children.

Brought to you by the National Nurses Organizing Committee as we organize to make 2007 the Year of SinglePayer Healthcare.
 

Bonnie Terry is the face of America’s healthcare crisis.  As reported by Nicole Foy, Bonnie was a homeless activist and missionary for the Methodist Church who was overwhelmed at age 49 to be diagnosed with breast cancer.  She had insurance through her job, and upon her diagnosis:

The statistics seemed to be in her favor. Over 90 percent of women in her position survive at least five years. About 70 percent make it to the 10-year mark.
{Her physician} suggested neoadjuvant therapy, a way of shrinking the tumor so it’s easier to take out.
That meant chemotherapy first, surgery second, then radiation. Wagner didn’t want to lose any time. She suggested {Dr. Robert Drengler,} an oncologist at South Texas Oncology and Hematology, and urged Bonnie to begin chemotherapy immediately.

Then she lost her job.  The Methodist Board of Global Missionaries chose not to offer her COBRA extensions of her health insurance, so she purchased one of the high-premium, low-cap “junk insurance” plans being pushed by Romney, Schwarzenegger and others in the “mandated insurance” crowd.  What happened?

Bonnie began racking up medical debt and was forced to rely on donations to try and pay for her care.
Accepting financial help was difficult for Bonnie, who always had prided herself on paying bills in full and on time. She wasn’t one to ask for special favors.
Amid chemo and radiation treatments, she sent handwritten thank you notes on floral stationery to her hundreds of supporters.

That’s right-she raised money from hundreds of supporters to pay for her chemo, instead of focusing on her recovery.  Her insurance ran out just as her cancer returned. 

By the spring, when she first felt the swelling again under her arm and returned to Drengler, cancer was roaring through her body. ….
In the chart, Dr. Ronald Drengler described Bonnie’s prognosis as “very guarded.” He called for palliative treatment, care for patients for whom there is no cure.
Then the chart noted Bonnie had lost her health insurance – and, consequently, her status as Drengler’s patient. It read: “Will be seeking enrollment with University group,” meaning CareLink, Bexar County’s public medical program for the poor. …
Bonnie later would tell friends she was hurt but not surprised that Drengler dropped her as a patient because she had no insurance. He has to pay the bills, too, she said. (Drengler did not return calls seeking comment for this article.)
It would be seven weeks after Drengler’s fateful words – back, with a vengeance -until Bonnie received her first chemo treatment to try to stop her aggressive disease.

Dr. Drengler seems to have forgotten his oath to first do no harm.  What happened to Bonnie when she entered a public health system that has been systematically underfunded by politicians on the payroll of the insurance companies and other healthcare corporations?

Once she lost insurance, tests took longer. Doctors rotated. Care wasn’t centralized. There were mountains of bills to pay, forms to fill out, documentation to turn in, public payment programs to apply to.
The stress of it all seemed to zap what little energy Bonnie had left to deal with the cancer spreading stealthily through her body.

Bonnie said:

“I’m on a learning expedition, learning how to access a system that I never had to use before. It is so difficult being poor. I would rather get up and go to work as I have been doing every day of my life than sit in offices begging for services that are so caught up with bureaucracy.”

Here’s why we should all be motivated by Bonnie:

Realizing she couldn’t get in for several weeks to Bexar County’s busy breast cancer clinic for the indigent, Bonnie, then 48, took a trip whose very itinerary spoke to America’s health care crisis.
As cancer cells coursed through her bloodstream, invading her lungs and bones, she flew with Moose and other friends to Washington, D.C., to lobby for increased funding for cancer research and improved access to medical care….
Though many in Bonnie’s circle believe poor access to health care hastened her death, it isn’t clear whether delays in her treatment are directly to blame for her dying when she did. What is clear is that she waged an uphill battle on two fronts: one against an aggressive form of breast cancer and the other against a sluggish and largely impersonal medical system.

Bonnie’s life and death reminds me of the life and death of my friend Bob Hattoy, a legendary AIDS activist who died this weekend.  He took his struggles with sickness and used it as motivation to fight for better healthcare for our country.  In a speech before the 1992 Democratic Convention, Bob, said, 

  “We are part of the American family and, Mr. President, your family has AIDS and we’re dying and you’re doing nothing about it.”

Except it’s not just AIDS-it’s breast cancer, and diabetes, and childhood diseases, and accidents-and murder by spreadsheet committed every day by insurance and healthcare corporations.

So we fight for SinglePayer healthcare so that Bonnie and Bob, and all the members of our family, can concentrate on getting well, not on managing their bankruptcy and begging for care.

In this movement, one of the important struggles is Massachusetts; the new insurance plans that patients are required by the government to buy have come out and here’s the bottom line: if you earn $30,000 per year, you will be required to pay $4,000 in premiums and deductibles before you get one iota of healthcare.  Elsewhere we read that a group of religious leaders got together and agreed that all children deserve healthcare-but they seem to have forgotten about adults like Bonnie and Bob.  But we are all patients, which is the strength of our movement, and we end on a hopeful note, as a group of idealistic medical students is committed to overturning the harmful legacy of the American Medical Association, which is notorious for blocking healthcare reform. 

If you want to join the fight for single-payer healthcare, sign up with SinglePayer.com, a project of the National Nurses Organizing Committee.  You can share your story about surviving the healthcare industry here, and start contacting media here.

(More reporting from the front lines, direct from our own in-house health care advocate – promoted by atdleft)

It’s not just America’s soldiers who are sitting in decrepit rooms begging for healthcare-all of us are in Walter Reed, writes a nurse leader today.  The Bush administration might fire a couple generals, but won’t show the door to the parasitic insurance companies that are hurting the rest of us.  Healthcare is, however, a big issue in the 2008 Presidential race already, writes a Washington Post reporter, but a major study by the American Association of Pediatrics suggests that the most common plans pushed by candidates will end up DECREASING preventive care and sentencing a generation of children to chronic health problems.  Lastly we take a look at anti-patient, right-wing propaganda blaming our true healthcare problem on sick people and Medicare.

Brought to you by the National Nurses Organizing Committee as we organize to make 2007 the Year of SinglePayer Healthcare.

Deborah Burger, RN, is President of the National Nurses Organizing Committee and has worked in hospitals for 30 years.  Over that time she has seen the criminal neglect of the sick and today writes:

The Bush administration’s attitude toward our wounded veterans parallels its behavior toward the rest of our healthcare system – neglect, inadequate funding, and privatization.
It also illustrates a disturbing pattern of misplaced priorities, record spending on a disastrous war while our healthcare security for veterans and millions of other Americans is left behind…

Since President Bush arrived in Washington, the number of uninsured has ballooned by 11%. It’s not much better for the insured. Nearly half say their insurer has refused to pay a medical bill they received, about a third say they have hesitated seeking needed care due to cost. Today half of all bankruptcies, and a third of credit card debt, is directly linked to medical bills.
Concurrently, the number of public hospitals in America has fallen by 30% the past 30 years, a period in which the combined debt of state and local governments has grown by 852% to nearly $200 billion.
It’s affecting huge proportions of our population. New York is preparing to close or merge dozens of hospitals, and Chicago officials just signed off on plans to shut or downsize 19 community and school based clinics….

The U.S. spends more, far more, on health care than any other nation, but much of it is diverted into the pockets of corporate CEOs, gobbled up in record profits for the healthcare industry, and consumed by administrative waste. Just last week the commission that advises Congress on Medicare reported that Medicare has to spend 12% more for care that is administered through private insurers than through traditional Medicare…

While Bush is unlikely to change his attitude, perhaps the next President will.  Christopher Lee in the Washington Post writes today that health is already a focus, with multiple candidates from both parties campaigning on the issue.

The problem?  The trendy policy prescription of “mandated insurance” does literally NOTHING to contain the healthcare costs that are bankrupting Americans.  As such, there is a huge vacuum for whatever candidate will have the guts to take on the private insurance companies that are the cause-not the fix-of those skyrocketing costs.  Such a SinglePayer system has been proven to work in every other developed nation in the world, but the candidates currently fear a backlash from the insurance lobby.  A real leader would take them on and fight to care for the sick and dying in this country who are living their thousands of “Walter Reed” tragedies.  Lee writes:

Although fixing health care is back in vogue, some analysts worry that the prescriptions of the presidential candidates miss the heart of the problem. All the talk about creating universal coverage has obscured the fact that most voters already have insurance, some analysts say, and what they are most concerned about is curbing costs.

“They want some more active government effort to change the way the insurance system works, and to put some more pressure on doctors and pharmaceuticals and hospitals to give a better deal to working people,” said Robert Blendon, a professor and public opinion expert at the Harvard School of Public Health. “The cost issue is a very important driving issue, and politicians haven’t figured out how to touch that nerve yet.”

Taking on costs is more difficult politically because it generally involves challenging powerful interests with a financial stake in the current system, including hospitals, doctors, and drug and insurance companies, said John Rother, policy director for AARP, the seniors lobby.

Even worse, the American Academy of Pediatrics thinks that the “mandated insurance” plans are a health hazard because they discourage parents from taking their kids to receive medical care.  Many of the plans that families will be mandated to buy are just junk insurance, with high deductibles and co-pays, and low caps.  Reuters:

But the American Academy of Pediatrics has joined a chorus of critics that fear high deductibles in the plans will lead patients to skip preventive care, such as immunizations and annual physicals in children. That could lead to costlier treatment down the road, for example, if a patient winds up in an emergency room.
“Faced with difficult choices, families may seek to ‘load up’ on a scheduled visit to save money or delay care until after the deductible is met,” the group wrote in the March issue of the journal, Pediatrics. The group represents 60,000 physicians in the United States specializing in treating children.

Only a SinglePayer system prioritizes care NOT insurance industry profits.  Policy wonks can read the report here.

Finally the anti-healthcare right-wing continues their jihad against America’s patients.  Their propaganda machine today kicks out lies that that the real problem in healthcare is people in this country use too much of it and that Medicare is too expensive.  Kick those patients and seniors out the door and we won’t have a healthcare problem anymore; plus it will be a boon to the mortuary industry. 

I take this as proof that the healthcare industry is worried by the growing national consensus that it’s time for change.

If you want to join the fight for single-payer healthcare, sign up with SinglePayer.com, a project of the National Nurses Organizing Committee.  You can share your story about surviving the healthcare industry here, and start contacting media here.

(As the bumper sticker on my good friend’s car says, “Poverty and health care are moral values.” Now ain’t that the truth! – promoted by atdleft)

That title’s not about some far-off war fought by child soldiers; right here in America, kids without insurance end up being killed off by hospital neglect for the sin of not being attractive customers, according to a new report.  That’s why RNs demand that any healthcare reform guarantee a single standard of care for all patients–something that only a SinglePayer system provides.  And in case you don’t believe that private insurance corporations undermine quality healthcare, Congress just found $65 billion in a budget giveaway that can now be used to actually provide care.  Elsewhere, RNs continue their patient advocacy as Schwarzenegger’s healthcare plan runs into trouble, our public health system is on alert stage red, there’s a die-in in Cook County, and a new nurse-run clinic opens in New Orleans.

Brought to you by the National Nurses Organizing Committee as we organize to make 2007 the Year of SinglePayer Healthcare.

Healthcare isn’t a commodity, it’s a right-and when we forget that, tragedy follows.  We’re reminded of this again in USA Today, which reports that:

WASHINGTON – Hospitalized children who lack health insurance are twice as likely to die from their injuries as those with insurance, a new study reports.
Uninsured children also are less likely to get expensive treatment or rehabilitation and are discharged earlier, says the study by the health care advocacy group Families USA.

Just one example:

Those with traumatic brain injuries were 32% less likely to receive aggressive treatment known as intracranial pressure monitoring. On average, they were discharged after five days, rather than eight days for insured patients.

This is what’s known as a multi-tiered health system.  Some patients can buy care, others can’t.

Please note that all “individual mandate” plans (requiring everyone to buy private insurance) offered by Romney, Schwarzenegger, Edwards, etc won’t change this dynamic at all.  Some kids will have gold-plated insurance; but poor kids will only have high-deductible, low-cap catastrophic insurance.  For-profit hospitals with cash registers where their hearts should be will aggressively treat the kids with good insurance and passively neglect those with bad insurance.  Only a SinglePayer health plan, like “Medicare for All,” guarantees a single standard of care for all Americans.

Responding to the story, the hospital industry gives us the weasel quote of the day:

“I consider the study irresponsible because it is not sufficiently thorough,” said Chip Kahn, president of the Federation of American Hospitals. “I’m worried that this will get people to focus on hospitals, rather than the kids.”

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports another way healthcare corporations are killing patients: private insurance corporations lobbied Congress to divert 65 billion care dollars away from patients and into their overhead, CEO paychecks, and lobbying budgets. 

A commission that advises Congress told lawmakers that Medicare spends about 12 percent more for care administered through private insurers than when the same care is provided through traditional Medicare.
The commission recommended eliminating that gap, which would save about $65 billion over five years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Rep. Frank Pallone, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on health, said the report confirms his belief that the private insurers are overpaid. Pallone, D-N.J., said he wants to steer those overpayments into other health programs.
“The reason they were paid that extra amount is because of their relationship with the Republicans,” Pallone said. “It’s a special-interest advantage that was given to them because of their relationship with the Republican majority. There’s no other rationale for it.”

Stories like this are what motivate Registered Nurses to continue their tradition of taking patient advocacy from the bedside to the statehouse.  Here’s what they’re up to just today: Governor Schwarzenegger is having trouble finding supporters of his incredibly complex health insurance proposal, and is about to be hit with a series of ads from the California Nurses Association (CNA) making clear it makes things much, much worse.  Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the CNA, notes that our public health system is on alert stage red, with Schwarzenegger and Bush threatening to make it even worse.  Cook County RNs from the National Nurses Organizing Committee stage a die-in to fight for their patients after the Board of Commissioners proposes slashing the healthcare budget 17%.  And RNs in New Orleans, helped by CNA funding, have opened their own clinic as they fight to get healthcare to those affected by Katrina and its aftermath.

Finally, don’t think America is ready for SinglePayer healthcare?  America disagrees, as nyceve points out.

If you want to join the fight for single-payer healthcare, sign up with SinglePayer.com, a project of the National Nurses Organizing Committee.  You can share your story about surviving the healthcare industry here, and start contacting media here.

(ERISA lives – promoted by blogswarm)

All these post-Hillary, post-Arnold health reform plans force people to sign up with big insurance companies, either individually or through their jobs–an “employer mandate” or “individual mandate.”  But a court ruling yesterday in Maryland might kill the employer mandate strategy. 

Meaning that the big solution being offered for our system-wide health disaster?  Forcing individuals to buy some junk health insurance.  All hat, no cattle there–helping along the movement towards single-payer health care.

In other single-payer news, the coalitions for health care reform keep growing, as part of a rapidly evolving health care/political landscape, and even conservative editorialists see single-payer in the offing–despite the best efforts of insurers, certain other corporations, and their allies to block it.  Activists from coast-to-coast are pressing their case, while the rich have a new kind of health care available: the four-star hospital spa.

Brought to you by the National Nurses Organizing Committee as we organize to make 2007 the Year of Single-Payer Healthcare.

Dan Walters in the Sacramento Bee analyses the effect of the Maryland ruling on Schwarzenegger’s new health care plan.  He writes:

A federal appeals court this week struck an indirect but potentially fatal blow to one of the most controversial pieces of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s comprehensive health insurance plan — requiring employers to either provide coverage to workers or pay 4 percent of their payrolls into a state insurance purchase pool.
By a 2-1 vote, a panel of the 4th District Court of Appeals ruled that Maryland’s play-or-pay health insurance law, specifically aimed at retailing giant Wal-Mart, violates a federal law governing employers’ group health plans. It upheld a lower court’s finding that invalidated “any and all state laws insofar as they may now or hereafter relate to any employee benefit plan.”
If upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, the ruling bolsters a simmering contention among California employers that Schwarzenegger’s version of the employer mandate also would run afoul of the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act. ERISA was enacted in 1974 to allow companies to establish health care plans for their workers that applied in multiple states, without having to tailor plans to individual states and to protect the rights of workers under such plans.

In other words, the employer mandate might be completely off the table, unless passed at the federal level, which seems unlikely. 

Wall St. Journal reporters Deborah Solomon and David Wessel have been putting their neandrathal editorial board to shame lately with smart stories about the nation’s on-going health care debate.  Today they look at the pressure for change–much of it coming from the business community:

Thrusting the long-running issue to the fore are political and economic forces that have been building for years but are given new force by political events. Not only have the Democrats taken over Congress, but state political leaders, including Republicans such as California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, are moving on their own to change the system. And U.S. companies increasingly complain that the current employer-paid insurance system puts some of them at a disadvantage — either globally or vis-a-vis firms that won’t provide insurance. …
The heightened political focus on the issue reflects pressure from two sources. One is voters’ anxieties, both about the cost of care and about the risk of losing insurance for reasons such as changing jobs. “A member of Congress goes home and two issues come up every time you get together with folks: One of them is Iraq, and one of them is health care,” says Sen. Wyden, an Oregon Democrat. “A lot of people who have coverage think they’re one rate hike away from losing their coverage.”
The other is an ever-louder complaint from U.S. businesses that they can’t compete in a global economy when companies from other countries don’t have to pay for health care. Deere & Co. Chief Executive Robert Lane told Congress last year that failure to act could result in a “limiting of covered services, loss of employer-provided health care … and even a loss of American jobs, both in the manufacturing and service sectors.”

The key element here is that businesses MUST start cutting the cost of their health care-and only a single-payer system, doing away with insurance company middlemen, can contain costs.

Even the right-wing Washington Times realizes that if the health care problems don’t magically go away in the next two years, then single-payer health care becomes a much more realistic possibility.

A few years down the road, January 2007 could be remembered as a turning point in American health care…. a serious drive for a statist, single-payer universal health-care program for the country could well be unavoidable. 

This is an extraordinary admission for such a right-wing newspaper.

Of course, some groups-such as the national coalition the New York Times describes here-seem pretty happy with today’s health care system, but want a few tweaks here and there.  And the health insurance industry will continue to advocate for tinkering within the current system.  Their take in the Wall St. Journal (reg. req’d)  on Arnoldcare (and other mandated purchases):

“There’s no question (the plan) broadens the opportunity for the industry.”

Meanwhile, Zenei Cortez, RN, Vice President of the California Nurses Association explains why the insurance industry loves both employer and individual mandates-and why patients won’t:

  With no controls on skyrocketing premiums, comprehensive plans will be out of reach for millions of Californians. Most could end up with junk insurance, with up to $10,000 in out-of-pocket payments for any medical care, meaning the average person will likely pay for all his or her medical expenses on top of the premiums. And many may forgo any medical care, risking worse health problems and greater health costs down the road.

Elsewhere, blogger Blake at Critical Condition puts the need for single-payer within a larger public health debate, Jonathon Cohn in the New Republic’s blog Plank finds one possible Presidential candidate calling for single-payer health care, and blogger Anna points out how much better Canadian-style health care is for patients than the US approach.

For a picture of how the other one percent lives, the Chicago Sun-Times writes about the latest trend in high-end hotel spas: medical treatments now available.