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I just heard today that a member of my extended family had another application for health insurance denied because of a pre-existing condition. This pre-existing condition is something she's had since birth--in fact, the best available scientific evidence suggests she inherited it from a parent, who also has this rare condition.
The denial letter from the insurance company helpfully suggested looking for a state program for coverage. In her case, she's a young adult who is potentially eligible for a state program but only if she goes for at least half a year un-covered by any insurance whatsoever. Meanwhile, she's at risk of major expenses if anything catastrophic happens.
Here's a young adult going to school part time who is falling between the cracks of any available health insurance plan. She's had health insurance her entire life and now that her COBRA coverage has run out she's joining the ranks of the uninsured.
For the conservatives and libertarians reading this who say "the market is the answer"--what we have here is a total market failure--no one will sell her insurance at any price. My relative's story is a hardly exceptional. There are people dying every day for lack of health care coverage.
How can it be that the wealthiest society that has ever existed on this planet is failing so badly to provide for the basic needs of its citizens?
Health care insurance reform can't happen quickly enough.
Keep at it, Sens. Byrd and Rockefeller, Reps. Mollohan and Rahall. We're counting on you to get health care reform passed this month.
I listened to a Congressman from Alabama give the Republican's weekly statement (after the President's weekly statement) on NBC this morning and was told that despite what Pelosi and Reid want, despite the threat of using reconciliation to push the Health Care bill through, the American People don't want the Health Care bill as it has been debated and argued over the past year. He said the American People want Congress and The President to "start over on a new page."
Here in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia, about as American a location as you can find, I sit watching this knowing that I WANT a Health Care bill to be passed NOW. I know that if the government starts on a NEW PAGE it will be in the face of a rate-raising, highly profitable private insurance system and a 10-to-1 ratio of lobbyists who are NOT starting on a new page, who will work day and night to weaken any progress.
Dan Roam from the Back of the Napkin Blog has posted a great summary of the current health (insurance) reform situation as part of a 4-part health care series.
I get out of the gym at the Shepherd University Wellness Center and go downstairs to the Cafe where I get my post-exercise coffee and plop down in front of the lobby television. Today on C-Span 3 they were showing an all Republican Health Care panel, supposedly exposing all the things wrong with the countries that have single-payer (read "socialized medicine") health plans.
And, of course, the Congress- men and - women were quoting and basing their arguments on stuff from the "highly non-partisan" Lewin Group.
"Don't bet against us. We are going to make this thing happen," said Barack Obama to reporters yesterday when he announced that he expected a Senate Health Plan to come out of Max Baucus' Finance Committee by the end of the week.
Obama is committed to having this plan out before Congress takes its August vacation (does it dawn on you that these guys take a lot of time off? I guess when you're collecting from insurance companies and other lobbyists you have to make appearances at their summer gatherings...), and time is running out.
The next time someone tries to claim we don't need a public option or, better yet, a national healthcare system, that the marketplace can solve our problems, send them this link. Then if they insist private insurance is best, tell them to go to hell.
Health insurers have forced consumers to pay billions of dollars in medical bills that the insurers themselves should have paid, according to a report released today by the staff of the Senate Commerce Committee.
The report is part of multi-pronged assault today on the trustworthiness of private insurers by Commerce Committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.). It comes at a time when the insurance industry is battling efforts to offer consumers a public alternative to private health plans.
At a hearing this afternoon, Rockefeller's panel is slated to air allegations by a former industry insider that insurers have put profits before people's health.
Insurance companies want people to not trust the government. But it is the insurance companies who do not deserve our trust. The practice is so commonplace with insurance companies denying care to avoid paying for it that it's known as murder by spreadsheet.
Those opposed to a national healthcare plan frequently claim people will be denied care by faceless bureaucrats. But it is the insurance companies who profit when people are denied care by faceless insurance company bureaucrats.
And when we do receive care, the insurance companies screw us on the reimbursements.
Medical problems contributed to nearly two-thirds (62.1 percent) of all bankruptcies in 2007, according to a study in the August issue of the American Journal of Medicine that was published today online. The data were collected prior to the current economic downturn and hence likely understate the current burden of financial suffering. Between 2001 and 2007, the proportion of all bankruptcies attributable to medical problems rose by 49.6 percent. The authors’ previous 2001 findings have been widely cited by policy leaders, including President Obama.
Surprisingly, most of those bankrupted by medical problems had health insurance. More than three-quarters (77.9 percent) were insured at the start of the bankrupting illness, including 60.3 percent who had private coverage. Most of the medically bankrupt were solidly middle class before financial disaster hit. Two-thirds were homeowners and three-fifths had gone to college. In many cases, high medical bills coincided with a loss of income as illness forced breadwinners to lose time from work. Often illness led to job loss, and with it the loss of health insurance.
Charleston WV - Health care advocates from West Virginia's Health Care for America Now (HCAN) coalition released the following statement today thanking Senator Rockefeller for supporting the choice of a public health insurance plan - a key component of President Obama's and Health Care for America Now's vision for achieving a guarantee quality, affordable health care for all this year:
"We applaud Senator Rockefeller for emphasizing at this critical time how important it is that health care reform legislation includes the option of a public health insurance plan. We need a choice and an alternative so we are no longer at the mercy of the profit-driven private health insurance industry," said Gary Zuckett from WV Citizen Action. "Senator Rockefeller clearly understands we need health care reform that puts what's best for the people of West Virginia before special interests that profit off the current system and who only want reforms that continue to make them money and deny us access to quality, affordable health care."
Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) wrote the letter to Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Chairman Edward Kennedy (MA-D) and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (MT-D) expressing the need to include a public health insurance option in order to set 'the standard for quality, efficiency, and cost.' Fifteen other Senators, including Senator Rockefeller, signed the letter which says that while private insurance industry reform is important, it alone is not enough to guarantee we achieve quality, affordable health care for all in 2009.
A public health insurance option is necessary to maintain strong competition with private insurance plans and to make sure insurance is available for everyone. The more private insurance companies complain about the option, the more convinced I am we need it!
John McCain's healthcare advisor has a prescription to deal with the 40 million uninsured Americans that would be a disaster for hospitals. He does not believe any American is without health insurance because you can always go to the ER:
But the numbers are misleading, said John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a right-leaning Dallas-based think tank. Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain's health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)
"So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime," Mr. Goodman said. "The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American - even illegal aliens - as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.
"So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved."
That's the biggest reason why hospital ERs are swamped already. That's a huge factor why health care costs for everyone are going up, because ER visits are hugely expensive. ERs are for emergency care. They aren't physician offices. John McCain's health plan is ridiculous. The fact he wants to pretend the problem caused by 40 million uninsured people doesn't exist is a sign he's completely out of touch with the problmes. You can't solve the problem if you just want to pretend that by saying "Voila! Problem solved."
John McMansion McCane doesn't live in the real world.
What's McCain's solution for the mortgage crisis? Everyone should gigolo themselves out to beer heiresses so they too can have so many houses they don't even know how many they own? Voila! Problem solved!
Sorry, McCain. The rest of us live in reality.
Update:
I wanted to include some of the comments about this from the other site:
As someone...
...who spent 2 hours waiting in an ER waiting room with an almost-burst appendix, let me just say:
[facepalm]
Just in case you need chemotherapy treatment or kidney dialysis, or a mammogram or a prostate exam, the ER will be waiting breathlessly for you to arrive. No need to call ahead for an appointment.
Well, doesn't your local ER happily provide well-child checkups, immunizations, prenatal care, Pap smears and mammograms, chemo and radiation therapy for cancer, physical therapy, dialysis, and all that stuff?
/ snark
We should all start showing up in the ER for regular medical care and take copies of this jerk's statement and Bushes that said the same thing. Make sure that everyone in the waiting room and all the hospital personnel you come in contact with know you are there because that is where the Republicans think you should go.
1. Studies estimate that there are about 22,000 deaths per year due to lack of insurance. But forget studies and just think for a moment. It matters if you got the mammogram last year, or get "treated" in the ER for untreatable metastatic breast cancer today. It matters if you if get your lipids checked and started on statins five years ago because you have coverage, or get "treated" in the ER for your fatal heart attack today. Apparently that is too hard to understand for some alleged health policy experts. Let me be a little bit more clear. This attitude by John McCain's health policy advisor and by right wing Republican idealogues is not just delusional, it is homicidal. They are justifying the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans. That is the equivalent of seven 9/11's per year, year in and year out.
2. Hospitals are getting killed financially in part because of the dumping of care into emergency rooms. They are closing ERs all over the country because of this. Meanwhile wait times in the ER are up even for the critically ill. Everyone who knows anything about health care in the country knows this. Except John McCain's health policy advisor.
3. And let's not forget that half of personal bankruptcies are linked to health care costs (admittedly the studies on this predate the mortgage crisis; though of course right-wing free-market fundamentalist privatization and deregulation led to that disaster too). Of course that includes lots of people "with" health insurance from the same private for-profit health insurance companies that John McCain wants to really turn loose.
If you thought George W. Bush was bad, John McCain will be even worse.
That unleashed capitalism that Republicans love to tout:
The parents of an Iraq war veteran who died in his sleep in February while recovering from post-traumatic stress disorder have sued his insurance company after it refused to pay his life insurance.
In a lawsuit filed in Kanawha Circuit Court in July, Stan and Shirley White of Cross Lanes maintain that Houston-based American General Life Insurance Co. wrongly denied them the proceeds from their youngest son's life insurance policy.
Andrew White joined the Marine Corps Reserve in July 2003, and served as a combat engineer, disarming "improvised explosive devices" and patrolling areas near Iraq's border with Syria.
snip
In August 2007, White was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, and began treatment at the Veterans Affairs clinic in Kanawha City.
Although he was taking prescription medicines at the time of his death, a toxicology screen performed as a part of an autopsy indicated normal levels of his medication, the lawsuit maintains. The autopsy found no disease, organ damage or health problems, the lawsuit states.
The state Medical Examiner's Office determined that White's death was accidental, according to the lawsuit.
However, when his parents submitted his death certificate to AIG, the insurer denied their claim.
If Republicans had their way, the insurance industry would not be subjected to regulations and victims of corporations would have no recourse in the courts.
An estimated 210 working-age West Virginians die prematurely each year because they don't have health insurance, according to a report released Tuesday.
People without insurance are more likely to be diagnosed with diseases, such as cancer, at advanced stages, said Families USA, a national health-care consumer group. About 16.5 percent, or 172,000 West Virginians ages 25 to 64 don't have health insurance.
"We have many patients who die because they come to us late in the disease stage and because they're uninsured and don't have access to care," said Pat White, executive director of West Virginia Health Right, a free medical clinic in Charleston. "The growing number of uninsured isn't just devastating to their own health but to the health care system itself."
White said a 53-year-old woman without insurance died 10 days ago while waiting for a Charleston pharmacy to open. The woman, who had several chronic illnesses, had received a voucher to purchase medications.
"The pharmacist found her right there in the doorway," White said. "If she had had access to her medications, more than likely she would be alive today. Her death is a direct result of not being able to afford health care."
snip
"Our report highlights how our inadequate system of health coverage condemns a great number of West Virginians to an early death, simply because they don't have the same access to health care as their insured neighbors," said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA. "The conclusions are sadly clear: A lack of health coverage is a matter of life and death for many West Virginians."
As a nation we can afford to spend $12 billion in Iraq for an unnecessary occupation, but we can't afford to provide healthcare for all? We're the richest nation and yet we're the only industrialized nation that doesn't guarantee healthcare for its citizens? Does that make sense to you?
ROCKEFELLER INTRODUCES LEGISLATION TO PROTECT PATIENT ACCESS TO HEALTH CARE COVERAGE
Washington, DC - Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) today introduced the "Pre-existing Condition Exclusion Patient Protection Act of 2007," legislation which would close gaps that currently allow health insurance companies and employers to deny coverage to millions of individuals for the conditions for which they need that coverage the most.
"This legislation is critical for the nearly 600,000 West Virginians who will likely suffer from chronic, disabling, and life-threatening conditions in their lifetime," said Rockefeller. "Because of gaps in the law, many of these patients are currently denied - or at serious risk of being denied - access to affordable, comprehensive, and meaningful health insurance coverage."
The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention estimates that 1/3 of all Americans will have a chronic, disabling, and life-threatening condition at some point - that means approximately 600,000 West Virginians. According to Senator Rockefeller, "Far too often, these are the very people who find their health insurance coverage interrupted, cancelled, or denied because of pre-existing condition limitations in their health insurance coverage."
For more than a decade, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA, P.L. 104-191) has provided important protections to individuals and families when they change health plans due to job-related or other transitions. HIPAA was designed to help guarantee the availability and renewal of health insurance coverage by restricting the circumstances under which pre-existing condition limitations can be applied to private insurance beneficiaries.
Even with these protections, a number of significant gaps remain in the law that hamper individuals with pre-existing conditions from getting access to care. Senator Rockefeller's legislation would close these gaps. It accomplishes this by making it more difficult for health insurers and employers to deny or limit coverage because of pre-existing conditions.
Senator Rockefeller has long been one of the leading voices in the nation advocating for universal health insurance coverage and improving access to health insurance for the underserved and uninsured. He argues that expanding West Virginians' access to health coverage will require, among other things, reforming HIPAA to prevent chronic disease sufferers from falling through the cracks in the health care system.
"West Virginians who suffer from chronic conditions have enough challenges to overcome," said Rockefeller. "Being denied health coverage by an insurance company or employer because of a pre-existing condition shouldn't be one of them."
Rightwingers often claim that universal healthcare would hurt Americans, that we would lose our first-class healthcare system. Turns out our healthcare system ranks below 41 other countries in an important catagory, including Jordan, Cuba and Guam.
Americans are living longer than ever, but not as long as people in 41 other countries.
For decades, the United States has been slipping in international rankings of life expectancy, as other countries improve health care, nutrition and lifestyles.
Countries that surpass the U.S. include Japan and most of Europe, as well as Jordan, Guam and the Cayman Islands.
"Something's wrong here when one of the richest countries in the world, the one that spends the most on health care, is not able to keep up with other countries," said Dr. Christopher Murray, head of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.
snip
Researchers said several factors have contributed to the United States falling behind other industrialized nations. A major one is that 45 million Americans lack health insurance, while Canada and many European countries have universal health care, they say.
While universal healthcare won't solve all of the nation's medical problems, it'll solve the majority of them.
I suspect that many people fear that this is a problem only for the poor to worry about, that since they work and have insurance, it's not something to concern them and they worry that their costs from taxes and their healthcare coverage would suffer under universal healthcare.
But under the present system ruled by the healthcare insurance industry, the United States already spends more on healthcare than ay other nation in real dollars and in percentage of Gross National Product.
We pay the most and get the least.
So what happens to people without insurance, isn't there a safety net for them?
Jennifer Holliday is too wealthy to qualify for indigent medical care in Angelina County, but poor enough to qualify for limited care at the University of Texas Medical Branch.
So Holliday, her arm mangled by a shotgun blast from a man who attacked her, must make the three-hour, 175-mile drive from her Lufkin home to Galveston for physical therapy twice a week.
Holliday is among a growing number of Texans without health insurance and Medicaid who are streaming to metropolitan areas and state-funded hospitals such as UTMB to get care that is not available at home.
The single mother of a 7-year-old son still has shotgun pellets in her arm and needs surgery to restore the use of it. She lost her job and her health insurance after the 2005 attack, and now lives on $900 a month.
She and others turn to UTMB because most Texas counties do not provide care to anyone earning more than 21 percent of the federal poverty level, according to a January report by Morningside Research and Consulting Inc. of Austin, a consultant to county indigent-care programs.
snip
Before becoming one of the uninsured, Holliday earned $40,000 per year as a paramedic for a Lufkin ambulance service.
Her life changed the morning of May 29, 2005, as she and her 18-year-old cousin, Anna Franklin, drove along Texas 69 in Angelina County. Eric Stephen Parnell, of Pollok, a man she had never met, pulled up next to Holliday and fired a shotgun into her Ford Explorer.
One blast struck her cousin in the head, killing her. Another nearly blew off Holliday's arm. Parnell abducted and beat her. He received two consecutive life sentences. Holliday said she received rapid and efficient treatment under her employer's insurance policy, and then under Medicaid after the ambulance service went bankrupt, canceling her insurance.
snip
Holliday says she was treated differently once she lost her insurance. "Even the way you get looked at and treated, it's unbelievable," she said.
As a nation we pay the most and receive the least. It's time for a new healthcare system to take care of everyone.
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