They Need Healthcare for all Guaranteed!

have Medical Insurance that I purchase through the company I currently work for.  It is very expensive and the coverage is at best, spotty and underwhelming.  I had a Doctor tell me that I needed to see a specialist last year regarding a health issue I was going through.  By the time I got the bills from the "Specialist" and the other places he sent me for tests, etc., I was over my head in deductibles, plan paid maximums for tests and the "Specialist" himself and various other line item expenses that had to be paid by myself.  

They had me set up to go through a number of other tests and see a few other "special" groups to bring about a change for the better in my condition, and I did the one thing that I didn't want to do, but could only afford to do.

More below

The insurance industry in the United States of America is actively recruiting and hiring and training LOBBYISTS in huge numbers to ready themselves for the shit-storm that the American people and HOPEFULLY their elected Representatives are about to lay down on them in the very near future.

As we are all well aware, medical insurance and the FOR PROFIT Insurance Corporations in the U.S. are out of control.  Millions of citizens are not insured at all, most citizens that do have some sort of medical insurance are under-insured and the sky-rocketing costs of medical insurance are becoming more and more prohibitive for the average American worker.  Add to that fact that employer based medical insurance is where most Americans recieve their insurance package and then consider the rising unemployment issue in this country, and things can only go from horrible to completely unacceptable.

Conservative apologists are perplexed.  They can't seem to understand why Americans are so worried about their economic struggles.  After all, unemployment is down from historical highs, we haven't had a quarter of negative economic growth yet, the Dow is still high relative to prior downturns, so what's the problem?

Maybe if they actually listened to just one average American instead of figuring out ways to place the numbers in the right combination to make all look well, they'd get their answer.  Hint: it has nothing to do with what they hear on the nightly news.

Ann Shea, 47, an attorney who lives in Butte, said the nation faces hardships that trump patriotism.

"The issue is, we're paying almost five bucks a gallon in gas, we're in a war we shouldn't be in, and the current administration, which is the one McCain will carry on, is just lying to the American people to get what they want," she said. "Obama's not about that."

There’s a movement afoot, folks. Insurance companies are itching to jump into America’s nascent surveillance society and their insidious efforts to do so are about to infringe upon one of your last bastions of privacy... your car.

It had to happen. I knew it was coming as far back as the late eighties when I found out that the car companies were installing those blasted black boxes under the hood. That was bad enough. But, this... this is going too far, in my opinion. I’ll be dammed if I want to become some blip on a computer screen monitored by some idiot with a sandwich in one hand and a playboy magazine in the other, paid to keep tabs on my movements from the time I pull out of my driveway to the time I make it back home.

Will it be that bad? I don't know but to me, it’s the equivalent of slappin’ one of those detention bracelets on your ankle axle.

This time, he’s absent not for America’s Post-9/11 Veterans, but for Seniors, the disabled and military families who will lose their access to health care.  

He failed to show up for the vote and was the only Senator other than the recovering Sen. Ted Kennedy, for this all-important vote that would extend Medicare provisions, improve access to preventive and mental health services, enhance low-income benefit programs, and maintain access to care in rural areas.

Follow below to learn more about McCain's absence, and the GOP’s "Corporate Welfare and Giveaway Program for Insurance Companies."

It's payback time for the Oil Industry.  Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is looking out for his friends and backers by making sure Californians are forced to stay in their cars and pay huge gas gouging prices ($4.37 per gallon today) instead of switching to public mass transit.

Already transit ridership is soaring in California.  But Schwarzenegger is unmoved and now chooses to make a second round of MASSIVE cuts in transit funding in the California State budget.

Schwarzenegger is transparent; he shows he cares primarily for the profits of Big Oil -- or he would embrace the soaring transit ridership as a precursor of other state savings including:  

o fewer cars on the roads mean reduced road wear and tear (oops! but that would mean less oil industry profit from road resurfacing using an Oil Industry product -- asphalt -- at millions of dollars per mile)...

Special Note: Important information.

Additional details will follow.

Remember a week or so ago, I suggested you pay attention to the New York Times list of the top emailed stories.  I think of the Times email list as a barometer into the psyche of a certain swath of the population.

This morning, The New York Times is reporting that  New York prosecutors under the leadership of Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, are investigating whether Wall Street banks withheld crucial information about the risks posed by investments linked to subprime loans.

It's long, long overdue for state prosecutors to focus on the illegal and criminal activity of the health insurance industry.  

I think I can speak for all of us in urging Mr. Cuomo to lead the nation, and swiftly turn his attention to the health insurance industry.

Does Cuomo have the courage to do this? Will Cuomo and his army of prosecutors ignore ongoing illegal criminal activity? Is Cuomo a leader, or part of the problem?  It remains to be seen.

What follows is testimony before a committee of the New York State Assembly, of a courageous hospital CEO and his Director of Utilization Management. You'll glimpse the all-encompassing corruption and power of the health insurance industry  in the United States. You'll be appalled and horrified to see how the political system is doing nothing to protect the American people from this predatory and merciless industry.

You know what you do with an ant?

You squish it. You stomp over it, you wrap it in a piece of toilet paper and drown it in the toilet.

"I feel like a little ant."

You wonder why your health insurance claims are not paid?  You wonder why people stricken with cancer are denied chemotherapy? You wonder why insurance companies can walk all over us? You wonder why Nataline Sarkisyan is not alive?

This diary is going to help you undertand how this thoroughly corrupt system is stacked against us ants.

These simple, I would argue, elegant six words, summarize for me what's at stake--today, in New Hampshire, and certainly in November.

You and I--the American people, are tiny, little, squishable ants.

I am so Goddamn sick and tired of being treated by the political class as a worthless, disposable ant.

Big hat tip to Turkana at The Left Coaster for higlighting this story.

Mortgage lenders aren't the only ones showing more interest in your credit score these days – the health industry is creating its own score to judge your ability to pay.

The new medFICO score, being designed with the help of credit industry giant Fair Isaac Corp., could debut as early as this summer in some hospitals.

At a critical juncture in the pre-primary vote, Paul Krugman spelled out the substantive difference between John Edwards and Barack Obama.

And it's a huge one.

Krugman minces no words in clearly delineating this:  Barack Obama believes he can unite insurance corporations with the interests of the American people.

John Edwards believes that the insurance and pharmaceutical industries will never give up a thing and that they will continue to work against the interests of Americans.

This wasn't the diary I had planned to write today. I had big plans for the second diary in my series chronicling Pete Hoekstra's dirty deeds and legislative whore-like behavior to be about Pete's cozy relationship with the Telecommunications Industry... However, my plans changed after I received a phone call this morning from my Mother.

I answered the phone this morning and my Mom was crying... Big-heaving-heart-wrenching-tears-can't-catch-your-breath kind of crying. If you knew my Mom, you'd understand just how unusual it is to hear my Mom cry. I can only remember hearing my Mom cry like that one time before in my entire life and that was when she got the call that her daughter was dead... It basically takes a tragedy of unimaginable proportions to make my Mother cry.

I'm going to give you a new term for the American healthcare system, courtesy of Rose Ann DeMoro the executive director  hero of The California Nurses Association. PAY OR DIE.

Please keep in mind PAY OR DIE or MURDER BY SPREADSHEET as you read.

I'm also going to tell you about skyrocketing healthcare costs this morning and how AHIP, the apologist/lobbyist for the for-profit insurance industry, and the money machine of the beltway political class, fabricates favorable information (sound familiar?) in an effort to maintain the status quo.

The misleaders filthy liars at America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP),  just like the liar General David Petraeus, have a lethal agenda. They also have a propaganda machine to disseminate intentionally inaccurate information to the American people. Again, I ask you, does this sound familiar?

Let's call AHIP's deadly deceit a  healthcare surge.  

NEW ORLEANS - Hurricane Katrina victims whose homes and businesses were destroyed when floodwaters breached levees in the 2005 storm cannot recover money from their insurance companies for the damages, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.

It's all comming together...

The Corporate takeover of our country is all about the court systems and protecting big business.....

Some days I am ashamed to be an American. I am so very sorry to say such a thing, but this is how I feel.  You may feel as I do after you read this diary.

Today is such a day because I am compelled to beg for someone who needs medical care her insurance company refuses to pay for.  

Yesterday, DarkSyde wrote me an email about this truly horrifying and tragic situation. It's about a woman named Connie with what is known as brittle diabetes. Brittle diabetes is characterized by wide, unpredictable fluctuations of blood glucose values and it's an immensely difficult disease to control.

The theme of this diary is begging. You will hear the word begging over and over.

Here is a link to the web site, helpconnie blogspot, where you can read about her terrible situation. If you want to make a contribution you can do so here as well. http://helpconnie.blogspot.com/...

Begging for medical help is not uncommon in America, in fact it is the reality for millions of Americans.

With great thanks to Matt Stoller for tweaking my brain and giving me many of the insights in this diary, most especially, Murder by Spreadsheet.

Matt also gave me an elegant way to frame the health policy debate going forward.

He said, "The simplist story in American politics is to ask, whose fault is it?"

"Once you've done that", Matt continued, "you find the bad people, then you name them.

Stoller was emphatic, "Eve, people will organize around a villan. You really want to know what they're doing? I call it murder by spreadsheet."

A red light went off in my brain.

And apologies, in advance for the length of this diary, but we're dealing with something like a a $ 2 trillion dollar a year industry which represents around 16% of GDP!

Here's the reality of what Democrats will face as they assume power next month.

A poll timed to coincide with the shift in the nation's political winds as Democrats take control of Congress found Americans believe access to health care should be the top domestic priority of the new Congress. The poll was sponsored by America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), which released the results as part of a campaign for its proposal to expand access to health insurance to every American.
http://insurancenewsnet.com/...

America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) is an organization which lobbys on behalf of the insurance industry. Their board of directors is a roster of all the forces (of evil) arrayed against the American people.

If it's business as usual in Washington when the new Congress is sworn in, then it's likely that they may win, and we (the American people) are the losers--again, as usual.

Did you think that Repblicans had run out of ways to soak the poor?  Well, guess again.This article, which appeared in yesterday's Atlanta Journal Constitution describes how Republican State Representative Rich Golick sponsored a bill to allow insurance companies to use credit scores to set automobile and homeowner's insurance rates.  The bill sailed through  the Republican dominated legislature.  What does your credit score have to do with your likelyhood of having an accident?  Good question.

Like most people, Golick couldn't then — and can't now — explain the connection. Why would information about credit card bills and mortgage payments predict someone's driving habits?"I work in this business. It is not obvious to me," said Golick, who in addition to his legislative job is an attorney for Allstate Insurance Co. "I do know that the data is conclusive that there is absolutely a correlation."