Okay, this is an extraordinary photo of a beyond-the-pale moment: Steve Maviglio, the Deputy Chief of Staff to Fabian Nunez, the Speaker of the California Assembly, directing Capitol police to arrest an un-insured patient for speaking to the media about healthcare reform.  That’s Maviglio on the far right, and Jerry Flanagan from ConsumerWatchDog in the middle.

Conversations with press like this happen every day, every hour in the Capitol; it’s why the building exists.

But I guess most conversations aren’t on the subject of the insurance industry’s number one priority-which is to pass an “individual mandate” law.  And most conversations don’t happen as a gigantic fake healthcare reform bill seems to be careening to an ugly defeat.

Which is why most conversations don’t end with patients being cited for a misdemeanor.

We’ll tell what happened and why, 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.

It’s a good news-bad news situation.

The bad news is that the insurance industry has convinced some politicians on their payroll to hop aboard the individual mandate train, and pass a law requiring every person in the state to buy one of their products-no matter the cost or the quality.  The train’s rolling here in California, for a test run, before it goes national.

The good news is this bill is about to collapse, and this could well end this nasty little trend in healthcare reform, and open the door to replacing insurance companies altogether with universal, non-profit, single-payer coverage.  The kind that works in every other industrialized democracy.

Meet Ron Norton.  He’s on the far left in the picture, looking confused as to why Speaker Nunez thinks he’s a threat to the Capitol.  He’s been victimized by the Mitt Romney plan in Massachusetts, which is the basis for the Schwarzenegger, Clinton, and other individual mandate plans…and here’s what he’s got to say:

I’m Ron Norton, an adjunct professor of radiology and an administrator at a Quinsigamond Community College in Worcester, Massachusetts. But like 66% of our community college teachers, I’m considered an independent contractor and don’t get health insurance.

“After a few years of making about $21,000, I made closer to $40,000 last year because I’m also doing an administrative job. Under the Massachusetts insurance law my family won’t get subsidy because even though my wife has health insurance with her employer, her income is counted against my eligibility.

“Her small employer doesn’t offer family insurance. I imagine lots of California families are in the same situation.

“I’m 47 and have no health problems but the cheapest individual plan available in Massachusetts is $234 a month. That’s 6.8% of my salary. That “cheap” plan has a $2,000 per person pushing the cost up to 12.7% of my gross salary. Even if I bought the policy I still wouldn’t have affordable health care, and the number of doctors is very limited.

“I have a daughter, and it gets much worse if I want to insure her. The cheapest plan for the two of us is $440 a month, $5280 a year. That’s 11.6% of my income alone. The cheapest medium-range plan – without the huge deductibles – is $632 a month, nearly 20% of my own salary.

Details, details.  Doesn’t he know how much money these insurers have paid politicians to support their bill?

Hopefully, and apparently, not enough, as Capitol rumors are abounding now that the Schwarzenegger-Nunez bill is DOA.  Some reasons why:

First-the California Nurses Association has begun major advertising against it.  People generally people trust RNs more than insurance companies on healthcare issues.

Second-It’s becoming clear that voters don’t like this particular mandate. (Warning; .pdf, of poll.)

Third-California’s in a heap of budget trouble, and now is not the right time for multi-billion dollar public subsidies to already-profitable insurance corporations.

Fourth-the “insiders’ coalition” is breaking apart.  I mean, who really deep down likes insurance corporations?

Fifth-Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan is emerging as a total loser.

We might a few more arrests along the way, but we can see the light, and build a template for stopping fake healthcare reform and winning guaranteed healthcare. Or, as we sometimes call it, CheneyCare.

Everybody in, nobody out, nothing less.

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.

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?

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?

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.

The Wall St. Journal reports on the new marketing plans for the health insurance companies: push health care reform, reap $100 billion in annual public subsidies!

We’ll take a look at that, as well as the GOP candidates who don’t care about cancer, the Sacramento insiders letting kids’ health fail run out, and new problems with the “Massachusetts mandate” law.

…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.

It’s like the insurance companies wrote the law themselves.  Across the country, “healthcare reform” proposals are moving forward that would leave the current broken healthcare system intact, protect the role of the insurers, AND give them tens of billions of dollars in new revenues from government funds?

Democratic presidential candidates like to beat up on insurance companies, but there is a lot for the industry to like in their health-care plans — starting with plenty of new business.

“Here’s the potential for a whole new pool of lives for them to cover, with payment behind it,” said Benjamin Isgur, assistant director of PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Health Research Institute, which examined the presidential health plans’ impact on industry. The study, a comprehensive look at health-care plans offered by candidates in both parties, also concludes that doctors, hospitals and other health-care providers would likely benefit since more patients with insurance suggest more would seek care and be able to pay their bills.

The leading Democratic candidates all propose boosting spending — by around $100 billion a year — mostly to help people buy private insurance plans.

Of course the insurance corporations are not dumb:

The early signals from the insurance industry, which played a major roll in killing health-care reform in 1994, are positive. The industry’s chief lobbyist, Karen Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, says she is encouraged by the debate so far and says her group is focused on trying to get universal insurance enacted rather than stopping it. “At 20,000 or 30,000 feet, we have heard encouraging statements from Democrats and Republicans,” she says.

Meanwhile, the same “individual mandate” law in Massachusetts is good for insurers, but blowing a hole in the state budget.  And that hole is not fixable, since there is simply not enough public money to give protect the massive profits of the health insurance corporations.

GOP candidates who have survived cancer seem to show no compassion for other cancer survivors, at least if you trust their healthcare plans, and Sacramento insiders are showing precious little compassion for kids in that state who are about to get tossed off the healthcare rolls.

Zenei Cortez, RN, has been a working bedside nurse for 30 years and is a member of the Council of Presidents of National Nurses Organizing Committee and California Nurses Association…and we’re quite proud to say she’s the first Filipino to hold that office.

She takes on the Schwarzenegger-inspired healthcare deal in today’s San Francisco Chronicle with an oped called, “Hasty Health Care Deal Not Ready for Prime Time.”

While reading her words, remember the experience that Registered Nurses across this country share: every day they watch patients *with* health insurance go broke, and get sick because they can’t afford the medical treatment they are allegedly covered for.  This is a key reason RNs oppose health care “reform” built on padding forcing more patients into the arms of the insurers who messed things up in the first place.

…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.

In addition to providing the insurance companies with *BILLIONS* of dollars in new public subsidies and forced payouts from working- and middle-class patients, the proposed deal suffers from the following problems:

It’s equally evident what the deal won’t include:
— Limits – other than a vague reliance on the market which created the mess – on skyrocketing insurance premiums, deductibles, co-pays, hospital charges, doctor’s bills and other fees that are rising at double, triple or more the rate of inflation and increases in worker’s wages.
— Choice of doctor, hospital or other provider. Unlike Medicare, insurers or employers will continue to be able to restrict patients to their medical plan’s network or require costly additional payments to see other providers.
— An end to insurance industry control over basic decisions about your health. Insurers will still be able to block referrals to specialists, deny needed medical tests or access to the newest prescription drugs, and can still refuse to pay for care deemed “experimental” or “not medically necessary,” even when it is recommended by your doctor. 

And if you’ve been reading that you’ll be protected from runaway costs?  Uh…

The cost protections are a mirage. Many middle-income families will qualify for state tax credits to help pay for the insurance they are required to buy. But a tax credit hardly makes up for costly monthly premium payments and other fees.
Further, the proposed annual out-of-pocket limit of 6.5 percent in costs applies only to the barebones mandatory policy. Anyone seeking coverage that includes such essentials as dental, vision, mental health, long-term care, and other needed care will have to pay much more.
The likely result will be more consumer debt for medical bills; a great boon for the banks and credit-card companies but increased financial risk for Californians and an encouragement to self-ration needed care due to the prohibitive cost.

And we’re not the only ones who see the obvious comparisons with energy de-reg….remember that was supported by just about every lobbyist in Sacramento, especially those with ties to Enron:

A decade ago, there was also a consensus for energy deregulation. The result was blackouts, higher costs for consumers, a financial calamity for the state, and open thievery by Enron and other energy corporations.
We should learn from that experience. Rather than rush through an ill-conceived plan that primarily rewards the same insurance giants, let’s adopt a more commonsense step, expand children’s health coverage with federal funds now and get real, guaranteed health care reform done next year.

(Game on, I suppose. – promoted by Bob Brigham)

I hate to be melodramatic, but that’s pretty much what it comes down to.

At least according to today’s report finding that America is last among industrialized democracies in terms of infant mortality.  Because our healthcare system is set up to guarantee billions of dollars of profit to unnecessary insurance corporations, kids born here are more likely to die than they are in countries with guaranteed healthcare through the single-payer model.

…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.

One place this hits hard is Memphis, along with other cities with predominantly African-American populations.  African-American kids are two and a half times more likely than white kids to die in infancy.  Racism starts early, I guess.

This is the context in which Rudy Giuliani stated his big lie about cancer patients being better of in America than Europe.  He’s been proven wrong but refuses to apologize.  Kids are being killed on a daily basis by this system and he refuses to admit it because it doesn’t square with his bid for President.  Ezra Klein takes a look.

One of the real flashpoints for the battle over healthcare is in Kentucky and West Virginia, where nurses across the country are traveling to support their striking colleagues in the Appalachian Regional Healthcare System.  ARH is trying to bump up their profits by slashing the number of nurses caring for patients.  Profits over patients indeed.

In California, we’re working hard to stop a fake reform plan that includes an individual mandate, e.g. a requirement that every person purchase expensive, wasteful insurance products.  Fortunately, public opinion is turning against this nasty little brew cooked up by Arnold Schwarzenegger.  If we can break it here, we can break it anywhere!

(We haven’t front-paged anything about this today, probably out of sheer depression. So let this be a conduit for the discussion. Hopefully soon somebody will come by and tell us this is “the best we can do” and we should stop whining! Wouldn’t that be great? – promoted by David Dayen)

The California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee said today that it will oppose the latest healthcare plan proposed by Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, which would sentence patients to patients to forced insurance, threats to seize wages to pay the premiums of the very for-profit insurance companies who are speedily wrecking our health care system, and mandatory costs.

“As more details continue to emerge, it is apparent that this proposal is riddled with flaws that could exacerbate the healthcare crisis for countless numbers of California families,” said CNA/NNOC Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro.

More details below, or visit the online home of the Nationanl Nurses Organizing Committee and California Nurses Association, and join the fight for guaranteed healthcare on the single-payer model.

Here’s a look at the rest of the plan:

Individual mandate — forcing Californians to buy insurance

“No matter how you dress up this proposal it still amounts to a huge windfall for the insurance industry, millions of new customers who may get virtually nothing in return,” De Moro said. And, anyone who fails to buy insurance would face “the draconian threat” of having the cost of insurance deducted from their paychecks. “Punishing the uninsured by seizing their wages to pad insurance company profits is not healthcare reform.

No comprehensive coverage

The state’s Managed Risk Medical Insurance Board will establish the basic plan Californians would have to buy. But the plan is likely to only include a bare bones set of benefits, with probable high deductions and caps on coverage. All other medical care, such as dental, vision, mental health, long term care, and more would cost extra. “The likely result is that families with limited resources will self-ration rather than obtain needed medical care,” DeMoro said.

Affordability

DeMoro criticized claims that the bill meets affordability standards as “a sad hoax for Californians desperate for genuine healthcare coverage.”

1- Since the bill fails to set standards for basic plans, “it is likely families would be forced to effectively buy junk insurance, and have to spend thousands of dollars more for a long list of essential care needs.”
2- The plan fails to reign in skyrocketing insurance premiums, deductibles, co-pays, or other rising costs. With costs continuing to escalate, there will be growing pressure on the MRMIB board to further erode the basic plan.
3- The supposed protection for middle income families is tax credits for the cost of buying the forced insurance. But tax credits only benefit those who can afford to buy insurance in the first place, and a once a year tax credit hardly makes up for costly monthly premium payments. The result will almost certainly be more credit card debt for medical bills; “a great boon for the banks and credit card companies but increased financial and health insecurity for Californians,” DeMoro said.
4- The proposed out-of-pocket limit of 6.5% in costs applies only to the bare bones mandatory insurance policy – those with more comprehensive plans will pay much more of their income.

Employer mandate

The new bill makes the extensive problems of the earlier versions by the legislature and the governor even worse, said DeMoro. Under the bill the maximum requirement for employers would be just 6.5 percent of payroll.

But, according to a June 2007 report by the California Healthcare Foundation, California employers in 2005 paid on average 10.4% — and unionized employers paid 14.5 percent of their payroll – for health care benefits.

Especially as there are no controls on rising premium costs, what the bill thus does is create a clear incentive for businesses to sharply erode existing plans or drop coverage entire, DeMoro said.

Unionized employers, for example, would save nearly $5,000 per employee to dump their current benefits and pay the new tax.  “Get ready for more strikes and other labor battles as workers struggle to maintain decent health coverage for their families,” DeMoro said.