How's this for another kick to working Americans who are struggling to get by? According to the guy that helped develop McCain's health care plan, no Americans should be considered uninsured.
His logic? Anyone who can get into a hospital emergency room is able to access health care, and therefore shouldn't be considered uninsured. His solution to the health insurance crisis is simply to define the problem away.
In today's Dallas Morning News there was a front page story describing the plight of the many Texans without health care coverage. Between the years of disasterous (non)leadership provided by George Bush and the continuing misgovernance by his republican successor, Bill Perry, Texas once again leads the nation with the highest percentage of residents without health care insurance, according to the US Census Bureau. Almost 25% were uninsured in 2006 and 2007.
As might be expected, the republicans found a unique way to spin these numbers and their spokesperson is none other than an individual who help McCain put together his healthcare policy... See below the fold.
John Conyers yesterday...and the Seattle PI today...ask us the same question: are you ready to rock the boat on healthcare and fight for genuine reform?
The answer is yes from a growing number of people....editorial boards across the country, 450+ labor organizations, 59% of physicians, the national nurses movement, and—I suspect—a majority of delegates to the Dem convention.
Remarks by Dr. Claudia Fegan (board member & past president of PNHP) at the reception at the DNC in Denver, Tuesday, August 26, 2008 for co-sponsors of HR 676:
There are 45.7 million uninsured people in the United States. There are probably some 50 million people who are underinsured, meaning even though they have health insurance they cannot afford the care they need. While it is true we saw a slight decrease in the number of uninsured last year, this was due to a massive expansion of public programs. Were it not for the fact that 2.7 million more people were covered by public programs last year; Medicaid, SCHIP and Medicare we actually would have seen an increase in the number of uninsured. It is so clear that a public national health insurance program is no longer the best option to cover all Americans, it is the only option. The private insurance industry is never going to get us to universal coverage.
We live in the richest, most powerful country in the world. How long are we going to allow this to go on?
Two months ago I admitted a woman to the hospital. Both of this woman’s breasts were rock hard filled with cancer, the skin was discolored and dimpled, her armpits were filled with swollen lymph nodes. How could this happen?
As you've doubtless seen, the McCain campaign has turned Hillary's 3 a.m. phone call argument into an ad that has garnered that most valuable of campaign assets -- unpaid media coverage. At least twice today I've heard radio stories about that ad, on our local CBS affiliate.
As I listened to the coverage, though, it occurred to me that the Obama campaign has a logical response. After all, the McCain ad appeals to vague, abstract fears of the type that really are more worrisome in the middle of the night than they are in the clear light of day. So why not a reply, which appeals to the things that really worry people?
I have been a fixture in a lot of health care diaries. It's one of my pet causes, it's just about an obsession for me since I don't have health insurance.
As we wait for Gustavo to make its move on the Gulf, with its trajectory very scarily looking like the one of Katrina almost exactly three years ago...
...it bears repeating that NOLA is still wounded, with no healing in sight.
This is from a campaign news release I saw via email.
Comment from Obama, more + bullet point facts below the fold:
Today’s news confirms what America’s struggling families already know – that over the past seven years our economy has moved backwards. We have now lived through first so-called economic ‘expansion’ on record where typical families saw their incomes fall, and working-age households lost more than $2,000 from their paychecks. Another 816,000 Americans fell into poverty in 2007 – including nearly 500,000 children – bringing the total increase in Americans in poverty under President Bush to 5.7 million.
By Louise Melling, Director, ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project
Last Thursday the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released proposed regulations (PDF) that could seriously undermine women's access to reproductive health services, including birth control and abortion. Now the public has 30 days to let the Bush administration know precisely what we think of these regulations. Click here for our Action Alert, which will allow you to send comments to HHS.
The Bush administration is trying to spin the proposed regulations as a necessary means of protecting health care workers who refuse to participate in abortions. But federal law has long carefully balanced protections for individual religious liberty and patients' access to reproductive health care. It's disingenuous to suggest otherwise.
The Democratic Party’s buzz word for the 2008 convention is "unity." But when it comes to the important policy decisions a President must make, how united are Barack Obama and Joe Biden?
A brief overview of eight domestic and foreign policy positions shows that they are indeed united on those issues that will be on Americans minds when they pull the lever in November.
The week-long strike by doctors in the Democratic Republic of Congo ended with a promise. It remains to be seen whether this one is any better than the last pledge by the government to address the concerns of Synamed, the union representing the physicians.
As we go into Denver, here’s a look at where we are in the fight for Guaranteed Healthcare, courtesy of America’s RN Union—the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee—which is working closely with the Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) to unify party support for HR 676, the bill to end our healthcare crisis through an expanded and improved "Medicare for All."
I’ll sum it up: among Democrats at least, there now seems to be a common vision of guaranteed healthcare, as memorialized in the platform.
At the same time, the movement has to deal with lobbyist-driven fake reform groups undermining the national desire for genuine reform, and with a healthcare crisis that is worse than ever. On a national stage, Conyers’ bill HR 676 continues to gather support, while Obama repeats that he would support single-payer, if he were starting from scratch.
The Washington Post reports that the government’s reckless overspending over the last few years, is now directly affecting the health of America’s disabled and elderly. The Republican-led Congress of 2003 created a "doughnut hole" in drug benefit coverage in order to make it more affordable for the federal government. Nearly 3.4 billion people were affected in 2007, having to pay the entire cost of their medication until they spent, out of pocket, $3,850. Many people in Medicare have diabetes, high blood pressure and other chronic conditions. The result? 15 percent stopped taking their medications when forced to pay for the entirety of their prescriptions. For example, 10 percent of diabetes patients stopped buying their medication, while 16 percent of high blood pressure patients and 18 percent of osteoporosis patients stopped as well.
I miss Elizabeth Edwards because she was planning to do this before the scandal broke: make health care a kitchen table issue that is front and center.
But we can do it in her place and hopefully Hillary Clinton will join with Sen. Obama and cut ads around this issue. Because THIS is the issue that brings lunch pail voters to the democratic fold and why this isn't discussed at all is mind boggling. Especially given the focus on this in the democratic primary.
Why is clear. This election is being fought on Republican turf: why? We as democrats have winning issues. Let's put them in front of the American people. I have hope the convention will do this but we should be talking about this more at Daily Kos too IMO to push this into the media spotlight.
The health insurance industry, represented by America's Health Insurance Plans, is on a "listening tour." Today, they're having an online forum.
So, Health Care for America Now is asking folks to submit questions to the insurance industry for their online "listening forum," but we're keeping a copy of the questions for ourselves to make sure we have a public record of all the tough questions that were asked but the industry didn't decide to answer.
Every once in a while I end up eating lunch down at the coffeeshop a table away from my favorite banker. He's from around here and I'm not, but we're both problem solvers and sports fans, and my sense is that his the dynamics of his job are such that he's obliged to eat alone. (Or maybe he likes his privacy, and I'm intruding.)
So it goes. (He seems good natured about the intrusions, and so they continue.)
In any event, we were talking about the economic prospects of our corner of Appalachia, and the region's need to attract new business, new industry, high paying jobs.
The usual stuff.
Quite unexpectedly I had an idea. It is well beyond my competence to know whether it's a good idea, or even remotely viable. And so I thought I'd toss it into this cauldron and see if it boiled down to anything.
The Toledo Blade (that's Battleground Ohio) has done a truly remarkable eight month investigation of the health insurance industry. This is one of the most damning, if not the most damning series on healthcare in America I've seen to date.
Thanks go to devtob for bringing this series to my attention.
Every last voter in Ohio should hear over and over and over, day after day after day, that a vote for McSame is a vote for Murder By Spreadsheet. It is a vote to condemn yourself and your loved ones to death by insurance.
This is what the Toledo Blade investigation concluded.
"People with health insurance were harmed because insurers interfered."
