Healthcare’s the hot topic in Nevada…California…insurance industry profit reports…and everywhere!
..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.
First up, Marc Cooper writes at Off the Bus that the healthcare debate is getting hot in Nevada:
Obama also complained that his supporters were getting calls and fliers from Clinton supporters accusing his health care plan of leaving 15 million Americans uninsured. Obama brushed aside the charge and then proceeded to criticize President Clinton and Hillary Clinton for attempting health care reform “the wrong way” last decade. “They went behind closed doors to do it and allowed lobbyists the and health care industry to shape the plan and eventually kill it.”
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, of New York, and John Edwards, the former North Carolina senator, said they would require all Americans to get coverage and would provide subsidies to that end, while Senator Barack Obama, of Illinois, says that as president he would require only children to have coverage. Mr. Obama’s plan would require employers to provide coverage or contribute to a new public program.
Note that word “requires.” The Times is buying into the framing of the insurance industry, and their proposal to solve the healthcare crisis by an “individual mandate”-requirement-that everyone purchase expensive, for-profit insurance products.
Remember, health insurance corporations increased their profits 9 percent in the first six months of the year-that’s $3.8 billion profit on $8.8 billion income. That’s, what, $20 million in insurance industry profits from healthcare EVERY DAY! No wonder we’re in crisis. Because they’re making record profits.
Meanwhile, the coalition of the willing (to sell patients out for insurance corporation profits) is breaking up in California. Yay!
In New Mexico, Bill Richardson joins the list of people who dismiss guaranteed, single-payer healthcare, while the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce is licking it chops over individual mandates.