The Big Insurance corporations have been on quite a spending spree lately, throwing money around like there’s no tomorrow (and for them, there shouldn’t be.) Their recent purchases include: AARP, banks, and leading Democratic political consultants-which should make you worry.  This nation isengaged in a fundamental debate over the future of healthcare, and the one group that nobody is listening to is patients.  Let’s a take a look at what they’re up to…

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

Purchase 1: AARP; Cost: $1.5 Billion

For the last 50 years, AARP has existed to sell insurance policies to seniors.  They took a much more partisan turn when Bill Novelli, a Republican insider with ties to George Bush, took over the organization.  Now AARP is on the move to strengthen their ties with insurance corporations-and to strengthen those corporations in return.  First we learn that they have a new plan to make$1.5 billion in royalties  by selling Medicare Advantage plans to seniors.  Yes that’s a “B” and yes those are care dollars they’re skimming.  Now, compromised by this treasure, word comes that AARP is supporting Arnold Schwarzenegger’s plan to force every Californian to buy private health insurance.  Why wouldn’t they?  They get a cut. And patients pay the price. Sigh.

Purchase 2: Banks and Credit cards; Cost: none.
Blue Cross is starting a bank for its customers and Cerner is about to offer a credit card.  Is it just me–or is this idea completely terrifying?  Half of all medical bankruptcies are due to medical debt, and now Blue Cross wants people to bank there?  So they can just reach into your account and take what they need?  People are already incredibly dependent on their insurers, and this will make them more so.  (PS-Blue Cross just settled a suit with 900,000 doctors claiming it defrauded them; but I’m sure they’ll be a perfectly trustworthy bank.)

Purchase 3: Democratic political operatives; cost: cheap
One of the reasons that politicians are so timid on healthcare is because most of the Washington insiders who work on campaigns take money from heathcare corporations on the side.  Latest example?  Dewey Square Group, who helped run John Kerry’s and other campaigns, now have the insurance industry trade group as a major client.  They’re using their clout to strongarm Democratic politicians into supporting “Medicare Advantage,” which gives insurers an 11% bonus for offering Medicare. 

While our healthcare debate is raging, all this means that the insurance corporations are steadily amassing more money, power, and influence.  There’s only one thing they’re scared of: you.

If you want to join the fight for guaranteed healthcare (with a “Medicare for All” or SinglePayer financing), sign up with GuaranteedHealthcare.org, a project of the National Nurses Organizing Committee.  You can help the fight by sharing your story about surviving the healthcare industry here.

(Sad, huh? “The insurance industry is the enemy of most everything we do today” –Harry Reid – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

One more bitter irony of the destroyed American healthcare system-Mexican immigrants come to the US, only to see their health deterioriate because they can’t get healthcare (among other reasons).  Fortunately the Mexican government is investigating how to fix that.  Elsewhere in the fight for guaranteed healthcare, Ezra Klein gives us pointers from around the globe, the Massachusetts corporate insurance plan is failing, New Orleans has no mental health infrastructure, and we take a look at happenings inside hospitals.

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

File this under “tragic” and “surreal”: it’s a health hazard for Mexicans to immigrate to the US because we basically don’t have a healthcare system. 

Mexican immigrants — legal and illegal — generally arrive here healthy but see their health deteriorate within several years in large part because they lack access to health care while they are in the United States.

Public health crisis, moral crisis, call it what you will.  We import these workers then refuse to take care of them, meaning they receive better healthcare in the undeveloped nation they were born in.  So the government of Mexico-an impoverished nation-is looking for ways to extend THEIR guaranteed healthcare system to people working in THIS country.  Wow.

Ezra Klein, an excellent writer at the American Prospect, also takes a global view in his latest piece.  Basically all the “guaranteed healthcare” or “single-payer” countries spend less for more.  I know we sometimes thinks its un-American to learn from other countries but perhaps we can on this important issue.

Whatever we do, we should reduce the wasteful influence of health insurance corporations over our medical delivery.  Massachusetts, however, is experimenting with an individual mandate model that does the opposite of that–and early results aren’t good.  Let’s see, the plans seem unaffordable for both patients and the state, older and sicker people are the only ones signing up threatening the long-term stability of the project, and patients are having problems with choice of care providers.  Oh, and while the article doesn’t mention this, we can assume that insurers are going to jack their rates up as soon as people sign up.  It is, however, good for the insurance companies.

Meanwhile, on a more serious note, we know that Seung Cho passed in and out of a dysfunctional mentel health system in Virginia.  If a potential Seung Cho is alive in New Orleans, he will find even fewer mental health resources there.

Finally, a new study proves that when hospitals cut the number of nurses, patients die-and an editorial points out that when counties slash the public health budget, patients also die.  The nurses in Cook County fighting for the public health system there are American heroes!

If you want to join the fight for guaranteed healthcare (with a “Medicare for All” or SinglePayer financing), sign up with GuaranteedHealthcare.org, a project of the National Nurses Organizing Committee.  You can help the fight by sharing your story about surviving the healthcare industry here.

(I hope so! – promoted by atdleft)

The fight for guaranteed healthcare made an important advance yesterday as the California legislature prepared to send Governor Schwarzenegger a “Medicare for All” or “SinglePayer healthcare” bill.  He vetoed it last year-but will he have the guts to do so again?? Meanwhile a new study finds Canada’s healthcare better than the U.S.’s an only 42 percent the cost, the drug lobby keeps ripping us off, and the insurance industry wants to attack Hillary Clinton no matter what health plan she supports.

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

State Sen. Sheila Kuehl is a healthcare activist and the only person in the country who has passed a guaranteed healthcare bill through a state legislature.  Her bill, SB 840, the California Universal Healthcare Act uses single-payer financing, and has been projected to save the state hundreds of millions of dollars a year while covering every single person in the state.

Sounds good to me especially as the California Nurses Association is the bill’s lead sponsor.

While Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill last year, everything has changed this year, from the national healthcare debate to his desire to challenge Barbara Boxer for her Senate seat in 2010.  Wouldn’t it be weird if he ran as the person signed Guaranteed Healthcare into law?  Of course his plan right now is forced insurance-force people to sign up with private insurers, and fine them if they don’t.  Terrible. 

The good news is Schwarzenegger can’t even find a sponsor for his bill-while Kuehl just passed her bill through the Health Committee and sent it to the Senate floor for a vote!

There’s an excellent chance it will pass through both houses and give Schwarzenegger a very difficult choice.  Leading up to that, the bill does face a clear threat from a few Democratic politicians who want to compromise principles for expediency-fixing a gushing wound with a band-aid, then calling a press conference to brag about it.  In the words of Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the CA Nurses: “Whose life doesn’t count?

Those politicians should read the new study that came out yesterday, finding that Canada’s healthcare system is superior to America’s at only 42 percent of the cost.  That means we’re wasting about 1.2 trillion care dollars annually on nothing!  And, if Canada really has a 5 percent lower death rate in hospitals, our messed-up healthcare system is killing tens of thousands of people a year unnecessarily.  Many people talk about the private insurance racket as “Murder by Spreadsheet”-isn’t this “Genocide by Spreadsheet?”

Meanwhile, the for-profit healthcare corporations continue to roll in the bucks, as companies just got their Senate friends to prohibit Medicare from negotiating drug discounts.  More care dollars wasted.

And, finally, the insurance industry is already sharpening its claws against Candidate Clinton.  I hope she realizes they’ll come after her no matter what she does, and support a plan to get rid of their waste and abuse…like SB 840 or John Conyers’ federal bill HR 676.

If you want to join the fight for guaranteed healthcare (with a “Medicare for All” or SinglePayer financing), sign up with GuaranteedHealthcare.org, a project of the National Nurses Organizing Committee.  You can help the fight by sharing your story about surviving the healthcare industry here.

(Insurance companies are a blight on the health care system. And Blue Cross makes cherry picking an art. – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

The coming health battle royale in California reminds us what we should have remembered from 1993: insurance corporations will kick, claw, and deceive to stop any healthcare reforms.  This time, it’s Blue Cross out to sink Arnold’s healthcare plan-they like that every single citizen is required to sign up for healthcare, but don’t like that their profits would be capped at 15%.  Why have a 15% profit margin, when you can have a 27%? 

Meanwhile, guaranteed healthcare, with “Medicare for All” or single-payer financing, gets re-introduced in the Golden State, a Brooklyn hospital is suing the insurance companies for conspiracy, the “employer mandate” to provide insurance is dead, and FINALLY the business press is starting to notice the economic catastrophe that is our healthcare sector.  That’s your updates from the fight for guaranteed healthcare-details below the fold…

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

The insurance companies sank Hillarycare-even though it carved out a continuing role for their profits-and they’re about to do the same thing to Schwarzencare.

When Blue Cross sells health insurance to someone who isn’t covered at work, the company typically makes a 27 percent profit. By the time salaries and other administrative costs are accounted for, only half the money the company collects in premiums from that person goes for medical care.
Those figures may help explain why Blue Cross – the insurance provider for roughly one in four people in the state who have health coverage, and with political heft in the Capitol to match – so far is the only major insurer opposing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s universal health care plan.
…. Schwarzenegger’s plan could sharply curtail Blue Cross’ industry-leading margins in a few key ways. Among the state’s largest insurers, it would have by far the hardest time complying with a requirement that 85 percent of premium dollars go toward medical care. Blue Cross devotes significantly less than that – from 51 percent to 79 percent, depending on the type of insurance plan – according to financial data filed with state regulators.

Don’t get me wrong-Schwarzencare is terrible; it requires everyone to sign up for junk insurance, and nurses hate it because the insurers are a blight on our industry.  Nonetheless, Blue Cross shows their true colors by turning down that bargain because a 15% profit margin isn’t enough for them.

Most tellingly, look at how Blue Cross is gearing up to fight the insurance reform planks that John Edwards among other have proposed:

The governor also wants to ban the practice of “cherry picking” young, healthy people least likely to go to the doctor, while denying coverage to others with even minor ailments.
That policy is legal – and not unique to Blue Cross – but the company’s success at limiting exposure to big medical bills has helped it rack up fatter profits than the state’s other top insurers.
“The idea that you have to sell health insurance to any comer is antithetical to their business model,” said Peter Harbage, a health care expert at the non-partisan New America Foundation who has advised the governor. “It’s not how they make money.”

If we’re going to get any kind of healthcare reform, we will have to take on the insurance companies that are corrupting the system.  It makes smart political sense to go after them head-on, rather than trying to protect them and give them the cover to continue blocking reform.  It won’t be easy though:

During the two-year legislative session ending in December, the company spent nearly $2.5 million to lobby lawmakers and regulators, records show – nearly $800,000 more than Kaiser Permanente, which ranked second among health insurers. The $1.4 million that Blue Cross spread around to lawmakers and political causes was also easily tops among insurers.
The company also donates generously to community organizations – $2.7 million last year – helping to foster good will in halls of power. 

• Meanwhile, there’s great news from California.  A plan for true guaranteed healthcare is up again.  Sen. Sheila Kuehl’s SB 840 is the only “single-payer” or “Medicare for All” plan ever to pass a legislature.  It works: everyone in, nobody, patients are guaranteed care, and the state saves hundreds of millions of dollars.  Arnold vetoed it before-will he have the guts to veto it again?

In the words of the heroic Sen. Kuehl:

“It’s amazing how much money you save by not wasting it on insurance companies,” she said.

You hear that Blue Cross?

Elsewhere in our national battle for Guaranteed Healthcare:

• A Brooklyn hospital is suing the insurance companies for conspiracy.  Finally.  One example:

In one example… says a woman admitted in October 2006 for a malignant brain tumor was denied coverage for eight days of treatment based on standards used for treating infectious disease. 

• States can no longer require employers to provide healthcare.  Our two remaining options for healthcare reform: mandating individuals purchase insurance, or  guaranteed healthcare with SinglePayer financing.

• The business media is starting to freak out over the damage healthcare is doing to our economy. Finally.

With all U.S. manufacturers fighting to maintain profit margins-and increasingly competing with companies from countries that don’t have an employer-paid health insurance model-is it time for significant change in this area?

• Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan is failing.

If you want to join the fight for guaranteed healthcare (with a “Medicare for All” or SinglePayer financing), sign up with GuaranteedHealthcare.org, a project of the National Nurses Organizing Committee.  You can help the fight by sharing your story about surviving the healthcare industry here.