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We need to contact our Representatives and let them know we are tired of the corporate insurance and pharmaceutical industry ruining the healthcare payment system in our country.
http://www.house.gov/writerep/http://www.senate.gov/index.htmWe are tired of health insurance coverage being merely an expensive privilege.
We need to tell the insurance industry that they have had their chance for years, and have failed us.
We need a change.
We need corporate interest out of the business of supplying us with the means to pay for healthcare.
We need a universal single-payer insurance system.
It will be an uphill struggle considering the billions and billions that the insurance industry will spend to defeat such a movement. The airtime they will buy, to spread their propaganda over the public airwaves in order to protect their bottom line will be staggering.
It will take an aware, informed, and unified populace to overcome their lies.
We must.
The time is at hand.
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Healthy Bottom LinesWhen it comes to comprehensive health care, what are progressives' core demands?
By Ezra Klein
Web Exclusive: 01.24.07
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Insurance That Insures:The insurance industry's business model is darkly cynical: Spend enormous amounts of money identifying who most needs health insurance in order to deny them coverage. Profits are generated by insuring the healthy, not the sick. That's why recently discovered underwriting documents show they'll deny coverage for everything from taking the acne medication Accutane (you take medications!) to working as an air traffic controller (too stressful, presumably). It's an approach violently at odds with the public's conception of the point of insurance.
Any plan that preserves this business model isn't worth the paper it's printed on. Many smart observers believe the only acceptable outcome is the total dissolution of private insurance, at least for basic coverage. It's hard, however, to imagine a president and filibuster-proof majority of Congress uniting to dissolve a multibillion-dollar industry that provides thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in campaign contributions.
That leaves regulation. Imposing "community rating" on the industry would end their ability to price discriminate based on age, health status, medical history, or any other variable. All applicants would pay the same premiums. Combine that with "guaranteed issue" -- where insurers can't refuse to offer coverage -- and the industry will have to compete on grounds of price and quality, not on who can best identify, discriminate against, and dissuade needy applicants.
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http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=12399-------
Bush's Health Care ConspiracyMarilyn Clement
January 24, 2007
Marilyn Clement is the national coordinator of Healthcare-NOW.
As I thought about the president’s speech Tuesday night, I imagined his handlers sitting together joking conspiratorially about how to twist the issues and help the president’s plummeting popularity. How could his handlers sneak through more support for his primary agenda, and that of right-wing fiscal conservatives, to decrease entitlements to Social Security and Medicare and transfer more of the people’s tax money into Wall Street—while couching this scheme in the language of “health care for all?”
I thought of them saying to each other, “Wow, now that the voters have made clear that a universal health care system is their number one domestic priority—why don’t we grab that issue from the Democrats? Since the Democratic Congress hasn’t gotten the message and isn’t really creating a new health care system, let’s make it work for us!”
The president got it. One obvious thing he realized was that the American people want a national health care system for themselves and their children as much as they want our troops out of the killing fields of Iraq. So he offered several unworkable and ridiculous suggestions: relief from payroll taxes and a tax credit to the uninsured. What is he thinking? That the uninsured have big salaries and are seeking some kind of tax shelter?
His proposed $15,000 income tax deduction for middle-class families would jeopardize both Medicare and Social Security while not providing enough money to purchase real health insurance, projected to cost $16,500 for a family of four by the year 2009. And employers would be encouraged to bail out of the health care system even faster than they are today.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/01/24/bushs_health_care_conspiracy.php
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