Nearly 50 million Americans -- one-in-six of our fellow citizens -- lack health insurance. And even those families lucky enough to have health insurance have seen their premiums triple in the past decade, now paying an average of $16,000 per year and rising rapidly.
In short, America's health care system is in a crisis, and it's time to do something about it.
Congress is currently working on new reform legislation that will make quality health care available and affordable for all Americans. But we know the forces of the status quo will battle us every step of the way.
So we're asking for your help, today, to get this critical legislation passed.
The whole reason for health insurance in the first place is to spread costs among as large a group of people as possible, so we all pay a reasonable amount for quality health care and don't get stuck with an enormous bill if we get sick.
Unfortunately, that's not how our system works anymore. Now, private insurance companies have been able to cherry-pick the healthy customers they want -- denying coverage to people who are most in need while charging exorbitant premiums to other folks with "pre-existing conditions."
That's not right. It's time for private insurers to treat Americans fairly.
That's why, as part of any health care reform plan, we support a public health insurance option that would foster greater competition in the marketplace. If you're happy with your current insurance plan, you could keep it. But a public option would create more choices for consumers -- and lead to lower costs and better quality for all. Plus, a public option would allow you to always keep your insurance, even if you lose or change your job.
At a time when our country is struggling to pull itself out of a severe recession, we can't let our health care system continue to be an anchor dragging down our nation's economy.
We'll take this petition to our colleagues, to show them the strong grassroots support for reforming America's health care system now -- including creating a public insurance option.
More than 33,000 people have already signed our online petition since we launched it on Friday -- but we'd love to have your support as well. With private insurance lobbyists roaming the Capitol, trying to stop real health care reform, the time to act is now. We need you to make your voice heard.
Right now, I have this weird bite/boil thingy on my knee (we thought it was a spider bite or mrsa or something). I went to the doctor in April for it, spent hundreds of dollars out of pocket. The medicine didn't work and I still have this weird thing on my knee that worries me. But I can't go to the doctor because I don't have the money.
So tell me, why can't I get insurance? I'm willing to pay if I know I will be covered but I've seen too many people spend thousands of dollars for insurance and then for it to drop them or refuse to cover the expense and there is nothing the people can do.
Why can't we just have a medicare for all program?
I'm a 25 year old grad student and I was told it would cost me about $200 a month to get covered for a student insurance program ($400 a month for private insurance) for a single adult and there are many restrictions in which I won't be covered. I don't have a job and even if I did I wouldn't be able to get health insurance through it because I would be working part-time to attend school. Not only that but I have a pre-existing condition, I have gray's disease otherwise known as hyperthyrodism, it's inactive at the moment but it has messed with my health before (enlarged my thyroid for one and cost me thousands of dollars in expensive tests when I was covered by my parents insurance when I was in college).
I have absolutely no guarantee that I will not be denied coverage or that I won't be given full coverage. I have no income, I'm a full-time single grad student living with her parents in order to afford to go to school and I have student loans up the wahzoo.
I also have no gurantee of employment after I earn my Masters.
My masters is in Interdisciplinary Studies and Publishing and I think I'll have a better chance of trying my hand at writing a novel than getting a job in this economy.
wow
But what's in a name? Ask Senator Schumer who seems to have confused "public option" with Senator Conrad's "co-op". Make no mistake: Co-ops cannot use market share to bargain down the prices of services or apply competitive pressure to the rest of the insurance industry. Further, per Conrad himself, the co-ops could get federal seed money, but that would be the end of federal involvement. This is NOT REFORM; it is barely the semblance of reform. In fact, it's worse than doing nothing because it will close the discussion without affecting the status quo. This is an issue which comes to the surface only once in every generation. Once our opportunity is bartered away, we will be left -- I fear -- with what the insurance companies want us to have... with what the good senators (Republican and Democrat) allow us to have.
Why are these three Senators hustling this snake oil rather than the only proven and workable reform: nonprofit single-payer Medicare for all?
Let's have a look at the really important numbers: legalized bribes--er, campaign contributions--to these guys from the health-sector corporations for the 2008 and 2010 election cycles:
2008 2010 TOTAL
Durbin $489,084 $7,000 $496,084
Leahy $46,550 $7,000 $53,550
Schumer $10,000 $148,000 $158,000
In other words, these three esteemed Senators are all well-paid employees of the very HMOs who are seeking to maintain their piratical death grip on the health system, bloating costs by denying coverage, hiking premiums and deductibles, and siphoning off hundreds of billions in profits and bloated CEO compensation--not one penny of which goes to medical care for anyone! As Paul Krugman said, what the rest of the world calls health-care costs, the HMOs call revenues.
In my first post, above, you have the details that explain the consumer fraud of the public option
Now you have the motivation for perpetrating this fraud.
For details on the only real health-care reform--single payer--and how to achieve it, please see the following Web sites:
www.singlepayeraction.org
http://www.healthcare-now.org
www.pnhp.org
http://www.1payer.net/
http://www.guaranteedhealthcare.org/
Well--let's put this "public-option" potion (the same one being peddled in the House by Waxman and Rangel) in the test tube and find out:
Unlike the nonprofit, single-payer plans in place in the rest of the industrialized world, this "public option" would charge premiums and impose deductibles; unlike them, it could not accept government funding (after the initial infusion), and so would have to be self-sustaining. Moreover, it would likely be saddled with the oldest, sickest, and thus most expensive cohort, and would have to offer higher fees than Medicare--so no cost savings, none of the cost efficiencies of a single risk pool; it would be competing with 1,300 private HMO risk pools, which would aggressively market the youngest, healthiest, and thus cheapest and most profitable cohort.
This is consumer fraud that fails to loosen the HMOs' dysfunctional vice grip on this system.
Public-option plans have been tried in several states and have failed to reduce costs or substantially increase coverage. The only PROVEN way of accomplishing both goals--based on a half-century's track record in Europe and Canada--is nonprofit Medicare for all.
For a detailed analysis of the pitfalls of the public options, see:
http://www.commondreams.org/print/43440
http://www.pnhp.org/facts/singlepayer_faq.php#public-option
The rest of us will live in a real nation.
But, hey--if you like getting cheated by the HMOs, we can only recall the sage words of P. T. Barnum: "There's a su ck er born every minute."
I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that the trial lawyers were big supporters during the campaign. Nah, he wouldn't do that. Would he?
laughing
one more thing..... do away with the preexisting conditions exclusion
http://sanders.senate.gov/petitions/index.cfm?uid=7fd59f2e-88e1-477a-8eaf-762a5b050809
Single payer NOW!
That describes public health insurance. Private health insurance is designed to turn a profit by collecting premiums from carefully selected insureds and then minimizing payouts by all possible means.
I work in insurance. My brother once asked me what the difference was between an insurance company and a ponzi scheme. My response was to ask what the difference is between a risk pool and a nation.
pool of funds to pay benefits (making modest profits on that), & paying
benefits to policy holders as needed. It's about 'risk sharing'. It can work
well & fairly enough, IN THEORY. Greed, however, tends to get in the way.
everyone ought to bump the above to other blogs
Blue dogs Dems and Repubs, forget capitalism until the country heals from the largest screwup of Capitalism in history created by greedy Senators and House. The people want / need, have a human, moral right to health care, preventive, wellness, critical health care that starts in every community. Clinics for prevention and wellness programs, clinics for medical appointments, urgent care for fractures etc., the ER doesn't / shouldn't provide.
War is what seems to excite the opponents on health care. War oversees strips every dime away from any respectable health care program possible. Efficiency is the problem in America. Insurance fraud, id. fraud, but a well oiled system will save millions in the short term, trillions in long. "please take another look at Canada's plan"....."the security with the photo, halogram..id card, the computer data for all patients can be retrieved in seconds not days. Pretty efficient. What is it about Canada? The rich don't complain about their taxes, neither do the poor!! Because we believe in equality for all.