(Ain’t that the truth? – promoted by atdleft)

I guess it’s true there are lies, dang lies, and Wall St. Journal editorials.  Now they’re aiming at the healthcare debate-which might be good news if it means they’re worried about progress.  The Journal looks at the demise of Illinois’ terrible healthcare plan and sees the death of universal healthcare and of healthcare guaranteed with single-payer financing.  Both not true.  We’ll look at what they say and why-and point out a couple of much more honest assessments after the flip…

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

And they start….

“Universal” government health care has once again returned as a political cause, with many Democrats believing it’s the key to White House victory in 2008. They might want to study last week’s news from Illinois, where Democratic Governor Rod Blagojevich’s tax increase to finance health care became the political rout of the year.

First of all, let’s realize why Blagojevich needed a tax cut: because his lame plan is built on increasing public subsidies to the same private, for-profit insurance companies that are destroying healthcare in this country.

By contrast, guaranteeing healthcare with the single-payer model that has succeeded in every other country would save us hundreds of millions of dollars a year.  So Blogojevich screwed up here by following the herd of other politicians. 

That said, you won’t find the Journal crusading against insurance industry bloat, denial of care, and malfeasance, will you?  Instead they’re hoping to Hillarycare this issue: attack politicians who cut deals with the insurance industry, and hope to kill all healthcare reform along the way. 

The good news is that plans built on increasing insurance company revenues will never work and will leave America eager for genuine solutions to the problem.  So it’s going to be much harder for the Journal to stall genuine reform again.

But a funny thing happened on this road to Canadian health care. The state’s more rational Democrats revolted, arguing it would drive businesses out of Illinois.

Ah, the big lie.

Frankly we could stand to learn a little something from Canada, as their people lead longer, healthier lives than we do in a demonstrably better and chaeaper healthcare system.

But this plan isn’t Canada.  It’s much more of the same: throw more money at the insurers and hope to do it in a decisive way.

The Journal knows that’s true but they got greedy. First they wanted to kill all healthcare reform, now they’re trying to kill the guaranteed healthcare or “single-payer” proposals specifically, by pretending that is what is being rejected.  It’s a non-sequiter.

But what’s bizarre is that businesses are fleeing the U.S. because we saddle them with such a huge competitive disadvantage.  Any employer would rather operate in Canada and never have to worry about worker healthcare than operate in the U.S. and watch insurance premiums gobble up all the profits.

Why aren’t our business leaders jumping up and down to get everyone covered with a simple, straightforward system?  They’re losing gobs money to increasing premiums…but they don’t seem to care.  Why not?  Lack of courage?  Lack of insight?  Herd mentality?  Something else?  It’s one of the great mysteries of this debate

As for national Democrats, Presidential candidate John Edwards has already proposed a huge tax increase to pay for national health care. At least he’s honest about what such promises require, but we doubt it will help his Presidential prospects. Illinois Senator Barack Obama has been silent on his Governor’s tax implosion, but someone should get him on the record. And Hillary Clinton, well, we can’t wait to see how “universal” her promises will be.

And here’s the game.  The Journal is also preparing for 2009, and trying to shut down healthcare reform.

Those of us who care about the issue need to be organizing now, so that when George Bush is finally replaced we have the political heft to force our new President to act boldly and decisively about healthcare.  This struggle will be won or lost by what we do over the next year and a half-not IN a year and a half. 

For a refreshing breath of healthy fresh air, check out this column about Illinois from the Physicians for a National Health Program, and this column about Massachusetts from Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association.

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.

(Horray for people power! : ) – promoted by atdleft)

Over 1,000 nurses and patients marched on the California State Capitol today to demand guaranteed healthcare, at an event sponsored by the National Nurse Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association. 

This is why we’re going to have genuine healthcare reform: because we have a beloved, engaged constituency pushing for it.  What do the insurers have? A bunch of mercenary lobbyists.  We’re linking to some pictures here…take a look.

Why are we calling it guaranteed healthcare?  Because today, no matter what insurance  you have, you can be denied care for any reason.  No other nation in the world has their healthcare set up this way, and neither should ours.  State Senator Sheila Kuehl has proposed SB840,  a guaranteed healthcare bill with single-payer financing: patients choose a private caregiver who is paid from a non-profit, statewide fund.  And here’s what a health care hero looks like:

We also debuted a new Web site at this rally, devoted to one simple thing: letting people upload videos telling the story of their mis-treatment at the hands of the healthcare insurance industry.  We all know it’s a crisis-but we need to see the faces behind the crisis to be moved to action.  Go visit GauranteedHealthcare.org and upload your story.

Oh…and those “individual” and “employer mandate” plans pushed from Massachusetts to California?  A Trojan horse for the insurance industry…and more cruel denials of care.

(In more important events in Sacramento… – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

Tomorrow is a historic day.  Just as we read of another life ruined by insurance…see below…nurses and patients are mobilizing for what will be the largest rally in American history for guaranteed healthcare.  A historic day–and you can read more about it below…

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

Again, Blue Shield ruins a life:

A 2001 car accident that left Steven Hailey badly injured was the beginning of his continuing medical and financial calamity.

While Hailey was still recovering in his Cypress home and with medical bills topping $450,000, Blue Shield of California suddenly canceled his coverage. That forced the former self-employed machinist to wait so long for surgery to repair an injured urethra, he says in a lawsuit against Blue Shield, that his bladder stopped working. Since then, he has depended on an implanted catheter that drains his urine into a bag strapped to his body.

Now, Hailey says, he and his wife, Cindy, can’t afford the care he needs because Blue Shield began garnisheeing her wages to recoup more than $104,000 it had paid for Steven’s medical care before canceling him.

It’s not just Blue Shield.  It’s every insurance company, because our health system provides them financial incentives for denying care.  That’s backwards.  So we face the problem of patients being murdered by spreadsheet, with Blue Cross executives and agents acting as accomplices.

Hopefully this case will shake up Blue Shield:

Blue Shield says it would not have covered Steven in the first place had it known that his weight was 285 pounds, not the 240 listed on the application, or that he had been treated for headaches, hypertension and other conditions.

The Haileys say that Cindy made an honest mistake when she filled out the application and that state law bans the rescission of health coverage without evidence that the policyholder intentionally misrepresented his or her medical history. Blue Shield disagrees, saying the law allows it to cancel policies for any misrepresentation, even inadvertent ones.

Whatever the 4th District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana decides could affect hundreds of suits challenging such cancellations as illegal and unfair.

There’s hope, of course, even as Washington snoozes away.

Check out “The Rabblerouser,” in yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, a profile of CNA/NNOC leader Rose Ann DeMoro:

Actually, she’s executive producer of the budding RN movement, a modern-day Florence Nightingale, who’s administering to the front lines of nurses embattled by corporate medicine. As head of the committee and its sister union, the California Nurses Association (CNA), DeMoro has spent 20 years building that small union into a political powerhouse in California. Now she’s bringing her revolution to the rest of the country,

As direct-care RNs finally gain a voice in our policy and healthcare debates, they will be able to steer reform to benefit patients-not insurance companies and HMOs.

One thing we’re doing?  Kicking off our national summer of organizing with a massive rally tomorrow in Sacramento.  This is a historic moment–the largest rally for any specific healthcare plan in American history, and evidence of the built-in advantages that guaranteed healthcare has, including an organized constituency.

But it’s not going to happen without your help.  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.

Being a Blue Cross patient sometimes sound like being a character in a horror movie.  The latest: a four-year old boy in California is born with a hole in his heart…as soon as Blue Cross finds out they cancel the family’s policy.  Cruel.  Read the whole story after the flip, along with an update on families forced into near-indentured servitude by medical bills, and good news in the fight for affordable prescription drugs and guaranteed healthcare.

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

How can this be?

Four months after her first son, Jack, was born, Jessica Bath received a letter from her health insurance company, Blue Shield of California, saying she and Jack were no longer covered. Jack was born at Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center on April 8, 2003, with a hole in his heart. Bath was counting on Blue Shield to pay for a scheduled surgery to repair it.
Suddenly, both she and Jack were uninsured.
“It was absolutely devastating for us,” Bath said. “How were we going to pay for his heart surgery?”
Blue Shield claimed it was canceling the Morro Bay resident’s policy because she had a medical condition, which she failed to disclose when she applied for the insurance. She and her lawyer contend the condition was insignificant and did not have anything to do with her son’s heart problem.

Just in case you’re inclined to believe Blue Cross’ side of the story:

Bath’s attorney, Ray Mattison of the San Luis Obispo firm Ernst and Mattison, said the case fits a pattern of similar lawsuits filed in Southern California accusing insurance companies of “post-claims” underwriting, meaning they search for reasons to cancel a policy after members file claims.

In March, the state regulators fined Blue Cross $1 million for routinely canceling policies of individuals who filed claims. They found that in all 90 cases investigated, the insurance company broke state law that allows rescission of a policy only if the insurer proves members intentionally withheld information when they applied for insurance.

The worst-case scenario was selling her home to pay for the surgery. But she discovered Jack’s condition qualified him for two public programs, California Children’s Services and Medi-Cal, which paid for the surgery.

It’s fortunate the baby got the surgery-but a crime that the public ends up paying the bill after the  Bath family spent years paying premiums to Blue Cross.  This is called cherry-picking, and it’s why all the reform plans built on private insurance will never work.

Larger questions: how can the Blue Cross executives sleep at night?  And why are we letting them do this to people?

The Baths probably will still have some medical bills to pay.  Let me introduce you to another woman to learn the effect medical bills can have on a family

Claudie Harris, 54, of Kansas City, Mo., knows about living on the edge. She owes about$5,000 toward her late husband’s medical bills. She’s paying it, slowly, from the salary she earns as a housekeeper at a facility for the mentally ill. But that leaves her a little short. So, to get by, she’s been taking payday loans, which are loans against her future earnings. “It’s easy money,” Harris says.

The fees are stiff-Harris usually pays $50 for a $250 loan. In two weeks, the loan falls due. If you can’t pay, it costs another fee to renew the debt for another two weeks. Pretty soon, the amount of interest could exceed the original loan, making it difficult to dig out: Harris’s receipts show an annual interest rate of 521 percent.

This is like indentured servitude.  She can keep working but can never be free.  All of the “individual mandate” plans proposed by politicians will continue to expose Americans to terrible financial burdens like this.

But there’s hope.  David Sirota writes today that the heartless healthcare corporations might be about to suffer a big defeat in Congress.  And a reporter in the “Insurance City,” Hartford, CT jumps on the bandwagon of guaranteed healthcare on the SinglePayer model after his incredibly frustrating run-in with an insurer.  Finally, a physician in New Hampshire lays out very clearly the reasons why we can and should enact fundamental healthcare reform to guarantee healthcare for everyone.

But it’s not going to happen without your help.  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.

(How about a non-CDP diary 😉 – promoted by juls)

It’s time.

People in this country are suffering needlessly and literally dying in the streets because our healthcare system is completely broken.

And it won’t get fixed until we, the public, demand it.  Too many huge corporations are making too much money-and too many politicians are being bought off.  We need to demonstrate the transformative political power of people hurt by the healthcare crisis.

Please join the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association, and over 1000 nurse and patient activists at the Capitol in Sacramento California next Tuesday, May 8th at noon to demand that this country move to guaranteed healthcare.

We will be there to give a wake-up call to politicians around the nation and in California.  This march kicks off a furious summer of organizing, as nurses and healthcare activists around the country turn up the pressure on politicians.  We’re also launching www.GuaranteedHealthcare.org, a site dedicated to letting patients upload video and text stories about their abuse at the hands of insurance companies in order to build momentum for reform.  (It’s just a dummy site now.)

Nationally, despite the public’s repeated plea for healthcare reform, little is happening.  Perhaps nothing will until 2009, when America gets the keys to the White House back.  In order to influence change  we need to create our national healthcare movement NOW.  It’s not a movement just because a wide majority of Americans tell pollsters this is the most important issue to them-it becomes a movement when healthcare workers and patients and their friends and family hit the streets, calling out corrupt politicians and healthcare corporations. 

The situation is more urgent in California.  True-Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed a bill that will take us backwards by increasing the income and influence of insurance companies.  And, scarier, some of the Democrats in the legislature also seem ready to climb into bed with the insurance industry.  But the good news is that Sen. Sheila Kuehl passed a guaranteed healthcare bill, based on a SinglePayer or “Medicare for All” model, and she’s likely to pass it again.  The only way for Arnold to sign the bill is if he meets the overwhelming coalition of nurses and patients that damaged his reputation so badly in 2005-and this is how we make that happen.

And just in case you’re still not convinced…here’s an excellent opinion piece in today’s Chicago Sun-Times about the perils of for-profit insurance, written by the heroic activists at Physicians for a National Health Plan, and here’s a recent article about the widespread racial disparities in health.

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

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.

As healthcare activists, here’s one thing we hear all the time: “of course SinglePayer is the only way to fix healthcare; but the country’s not ready for it yet; let’s go slow, instead.” Meaning the country’s ready for failed reforms and an even more powerful insurance industry?.  Commentator Maggie Mahar looks at this argument, notes its parallels with the passage of Medicare, and argues that we actually are ready for SinglePayer reform now.  Meanwhile, we find labor’s advocacy for SinglePayer increasing, while Robert Samuelson, Mitt Romney, and Arnold Schwarzenegger continue their work enriching the healthcare corporations.

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

-In a rebuke to the “yes…but” crowd of people who admit SinglePayer is the only way to fix healthcare BUT think it’s not time yet, author Maggie Mahar writes of the striking parallels with the campaign for Medicare:

Ultimately, President Johnson succeeded by pulling doctors into his tent {for Medicare}. This could be done today–polls show that roughly 50% of U.S. physicians favor national health insurance. But public support was key.
And today, public support is building, especially among aging baby-boomers.
If you are forty and healthy, you may not feel the change in the zeitgeist. But today, boomers over 50 are beginning to face serious health problems. They talk about healthcare with an intensity that they once reserved for real estate. …
To build public support for radical health care reform we also need to train our sights on those on those who are making excessive profits in our money-driven health care system. A good campaign needs a good enemy-and the for-profit health care industry fits the bill perfectly.
Even Obama has suggested (however cautiously) that we should being to question the profitability of U.S. healthcare: “Another, more controversial area we need to look at is how much of our health care spending is going toward the record-breaking profits earned by the drug and health care industry,” he noted in January. “It’s perfectly understandable for a corporation to try and make a profit, but when those profits are soaring higher and higher each year while millions lose their coverage and premiums skyrocket, we have a responsibility to ask why.”
That Obama would dare to make such a remark shows how the mood of the country is changing. 

–PNHP activist Don McCanne joins Maggie Mahar at TPM Book Club and lays out a compelling case for why only SinglePayer will actually work.

-Labor continues to rally around HR 676, John Conyers’ SinglePayer bill, as the 100,000 members of the New York Capitol Area Labor Federation endorse the bill.  This makes SinglePayer the only real healthcare plan with a constituency (except that health insurers love mandated insurance), and ensures that Democratic Presidential candidates will have to grapple with this as some point.  They’re joined by The two largest healthcare unions in California, who are both working for SinglePayer.

–Meanwhile, discredited grump Robert Samuelson brilliantly figures out who’s causing the healthcare crisis: old people! 
He writes:

In our careless self-absorption, we are committing a political and economic crime against our children and perhaps — when they awaken to their victimization — even ourselves.

No mention of the mercenary insurance corporations bleeding us dry?  Bizarre.

–Employers continue to drop health coverage, pushing more risk onto individuals.

–And finally, even Mitt Romney seems ashamed of his healthcare plan mandating people sign up with private insurers.  Why aren’t other politicians embarrassed to copy it?  Arnold Schwarzenegger is not only copying it-but dreaming of the penalties he’ll impose if people don’t sign up.

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.