(Tragically, the girl in question, Nataline Sarkisyan, died yesterday evening after this diary was posted. nyceve at Daily Kos has more about the netroots’ role in forcing CIGNA to capitulate. – promoted by Robert in Monterey)

I am pasting a release below about the Dec. 20 “Patient’s Revolt” that forced heartless CIGNA corporation to approve the liver transplant that could save the life of 17-year-old Nataline Sarkysian.

It’s been an emotional day involving hundreds of people, but there are a couple of lessons I want to take away.

First–we have power.  We shouldn’t be afraid to use it.  A unique coalition of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, a union, together with netroots and the Armenian Community shamed a global insurance corporation into doing the right thing.

Second–we shouldn’t have to do this…and every candidate pushing to mandate individuals purchase insurance products from the likes of CIGNA, who would still be in the business of profiting through the denial of care, should think long and hard.  Are the CIGNA’s of the world really the people who should control our healthcare dollars?

Here is the full release.  Highlights:

CIGNA CAPITULATES TO PATIENT REVOLT

Following Massive Protest, Insurer Authorizes

Transplant for 17-year-old Nataline Sarkysian

CNA/NNOC-Sponsored Protest Sparks Flood of Calls from Across U.S.

In a stunning turn-around, insurance giant Cigna has capitulated to community demands, and protests that the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee helped to generate, and agreed to a critically needed liver transplant for Nataline Sarkysian, a 17-year-old girl in the intensive care unit at UCLA Medical Center.

A national web of friends and family of Nataline, CNA/NNOC registered nurses, doctors, members of the Armenian community, healthcare advocates and netroots supporters pitched in on an unprecedented national day of action on Nataline’s belief.  

The centerpiece of the protests was an impassioned rally today sponsored by CNA/NNOC with the substantial help of the local Armenian community that drew 150 people to the Glendale offices of Cigna. Hundreds of phone callers clogged the lines of Cigna offices around the country, all demanding that Cigna reverse its prior denial of care.  

“This is an incredible turnaround generated by a massive outpouring around the country that proves that an enraged public can make a difference and achieve results,” said CNA/NNOC Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro. “Cigna had to back down in the face of a mobilized network of patient advocates and healthcare activists who would not take no for an answer.”

The netroot protest was organized by Eve Gittelson an influential health policy blogger who writes on Daily Kos as nyceve, and many of the calls were also the product of work by the Armenian National Committee.

“Natalie is now seriously ill and still has significant hurdles in her fight for her life, but thankfully our combined voices and protests have finally given her and her family hope,” said Geri Jenkins, RN, a member of the CNA/NNOC Council of Presidents who works in a transplant unit at the University of California San Diego Medical Center.

“However, it is deplorable and appalling that CIGNA needed to have hundreds of people pounding on their doors and besieging them with calls to take the humanitarian step they should have done long before today,” said Jenkins who spoke at the Glendale rally.

Nataline’s mother, Hilda Sarkisyan, expressed her profound thanks to CNA/NNOC. “We couldn’t have done this without you helping us to stand up against this insurance company and forcing them to finally do the right thing. It is not right in this country for it to take a rally, a protest, and a major press conference to get an insurance company to listen.”

“Every politician who thinks the answer to our healthcare crisis is more insurance should stop and think about Nataline Sarkysian,” said DeMoro. “Insurance is not care. Paying for insurance coverage is not the same as assuring you will receive appropriate care, even when recommended by a physician as it was for Nataline. Insurance corporations profit by denying care to the sick, and that is no way to run a humane healthcare system.”

DeMoro said that CNA/NNOC will continue to encourage patient protests and publicize stories about insurance companies’ denial of care, as it has all year through its www.guaranteedhealthcare.org web site, while pressing for real healthcare reform “that takes medical decisions out of the hands of insurers and places them where they belong, in the hands of healthcare professionals and their families.”

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?

We need organizations who aren’t afraid of what is politically possible and talk about was is morally right.  Today the CNA placed a full-page ad in 10 Iowa papers arguing strongly for not-for-profit health care, Medicare for All, taking the example of Dick Cheney’s multiple heart problems, and noting that if he wasn’t receiving the finest in government-run health care, he’d be dead by now.

The patient’s history and prognosis were grim: four heart attacks, quadruple bypass surgery, angioplasty, an implanted defibrillator and now an emergency procedure to treat an irregular heartbeat.  For millions of Americans, this might be a death sentence. For the vice president, it was just another medical treatment. And it cost him very little.

Unlike the average American, the president, vice president and members of Congress all enjoy government-financed health care with few restrictions or prohibitive fees. They are never turned away for pre-existing conditions or denied care for what an insurance company labels “experimental treatments.”

The rest of us deserve no less.

We call on the presidential candidates to support HR 676, the National Health Insurance Act- an expanded and improved Medicare for all that:

• provides complete medical, dental, vision and long-term care

• eliminates deductibles, co-pays, hidden fees

• allows you to choose your doctor, lab, hospital, health care facility

• is completely portable and not tied to employment

• is free from interference or second-guessing by insurance companies.

We should have these conversations out in the open.  The vagaries of what it politically possible should never be the outer edges of the debate.  Let’s actually find out if America rejects a Medicare-for-all system; they certainly haven’t rejected Medicare.  It takes an organization like the CNA to jumpstart this debate.  Good for them.

One more irony about the healthcare crisis: the politicians in charge of fixing it…are guaranteed healthcare through a system that is not just “single-payer” (in terms of being financed by the government instead of insurance companies), but beyond is actually government-run.

Nurses are running ads today in 10 Iowa newspapers pointing out that this means that Dick Cheney, with his heart trouble, would probably be dead now if he were an ordinary American forced to search for cardiac care in a thicket of mercenary insurers and heartless HMOs.  Cheney gets guaranteed healthcare; we get squat.

We’ll take a look below, also at some recent highlights from the healthcare movement…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 Wall St. Journal notes:

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 Monday in ten Iowa 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.

MarketWatch noted that it is medical professionals who are giving the idea of guaranteed healthcare new life.

Among the good news this time, is that the American College of Physicians is calling for an examination of how a single-payer system would work in the U.S.  This is a great move forward for one of the nation’s premier organizations of Doctors.  

While health-care reform may play second fiddle to the war in Iraq among voters this election season, it appears that the domestic issue is taking on new life thanks to medical-industry professionals….Welcome to the 2008 elections, where medical professionals are turning up the heat in favor of a universal, single-payer system that represents a radical departure from what most of the major presidential candidates are proposing. They know that such a system is a long shot at this point, but the numbers in their camp are growing.

Elsewhere in the drive for guaranteed healthcare…

…I’m not sure who Brad Warthen is–he blogs for The State newspaper in South Carolina-but he’s become one of the most eloquent voices in support of genuine healthcare reform.

…The Charleston (West Virginia) Gazette continues its impassioned stumping for single-payer…

We are building a grand coalition.  Meanwhile, who really likes the insurance corporations except for the politicians whose pockets they line (to let them win office, and guaranteed healthcare).

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.