Guaranteed Healthcare

Ezekiel J. Emanuel chooses to assign liberals with controlling costs in
health care, when he should be waving his finger at the health care
sector. When “skyrocketed” health care costs come up, profit never makes
it into the discussion or calculations.

Check out this great video by www.MadAsHellInAmerica.com and then take a moment to share it on Facebook, Twitter, and with friends. Afterall, everyone in America deserves Guaranteed Healthcare.

California nurses succeed in delaying Blue Shield rate hikes for 60 days
People power works, and not just in Egypt.

Blue Shield of California today announced a 60-day reprieve in an unconscionable rate hike of up to 59 percent it intends to foist on individuals and families. The announcement coincided with announced plans by nurses, patients, and consumer advocates who stormed Blue Shield's posh California corporate headquarters in downtown San Francisco.

Coincidence? That's what Blue Shield insisted, even though they scurried to get out their press release the same morning they were surrounding their doors with barricades, chains, and security guards to protect their property from families facing bankruptcy with outrageous rate hikes and nurses who care for the collateral damage from insurance abuses.

At a time when so many Americans continue to fall through the gaping holes in our healthcare system, it's hard to imagine a more dysfunctional debate in Washington than the charade this week over the Republican effort to repeal President Obama's healthcare law.

By: Rose Ann DeMoro, CAN/NNU Executive Director

Survey research suggests that, while Americans are overwhelmingly supportive of health-care reform, they are not sure the reform cobbled together by President Obama and the last Congress is the proper fix. According to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, the country is divided three ways [1]: 33 percent for complete repeal of the measure adopted last year, 35 percent for partial repeal and 30 percent for no repeal. 

When President Obama struck a deal with conservatives on tax cuts, his opponents set the stage for 2012. With this legislation, the conservative agenda of the Bush administration once again becomes national policy. The goal: to redistribute wealth upward--even if that means letting the deficit balloon. By: Bealth Beat Blog

Three million Californians are enrolled in high-deductible health insurance plans because they can’t afford to pay high premiums. But the often excessive out-of-pocket costs could be causing some to delay seeking care, while jeopardizing the financial well-being of others, a new report from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research has found.

By: Ann M. Simmons
LA Times

The US healthcare system is to blame for declines in the country's life expectancy ranking, a study suggests. The Columbia University report rejects claims that factors such as obesity have shortened life-spans for Americans relative to other wealthy nations.

BBC NEWS - Oct. 8, 2010

Spinning Nataline Sarkisyan’s Death While Snooping Her Funeral: Highlights From Wendell Potter’s Harsh HMO Memoir (Part 2)

There’s only one more day before the first round of ObamaCare laws kick in. So it’s appropriate to finish clipping Wendell Potter’s new book Deadly Spin, which is the first health reform memoir. I finally read the entire tome and was surprised to see myself make a somewhat awkward appearance in the later chapters. More on that below. Here are the newsiest bits, scraped from the pages and summarized for you. (And if you missed the earlier two blogs on “Deadly Spin” check out the intro here and an abridgment of the first half of the book here.)

By DAVID WHELAN - Daylife.com

All across the nation, our allies in the fight to extend a progressively financed, single standard of high quality care for all are holding events to celebrate the 45th anniversary of Medicare. Four more than four decades, Medicare has helped millions of Americans protect their health and their wealth during retirement and during disability – the poverty level among the elderly dropped significantly in the years following the passage of Medicare. (READ MORE and TAKE ACTION!)

New census data released Tuesday confirm a huge spread in the rate of uninsured from state to state and the big difference in impact that can be expected as a result of the health-care overhaul recently passed by Congress.  

By Lena H. Sun
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 28, 2010

All insurers are required to set aside a certain portion of premiums for future claims that have not yet occurred and/or not yet reported over the expected term of the policy. Back in April I wondered if insurers were shifting some of their earnings into reserves in order to inflate their medical loss ratios — which measures the percentage of premiums that are actually spent on medical care — and keep their reported profits artificially low (remember, they keep insisting that insurer profit makes up just 4% of national health care spending).

Think Progress
By Igor Volsky

The legislative battle over the health care overhaul ended months ago, but it is hard to tell from the intense effort now under way by insurance companies to retool a critical provision.

The New York Times
By REED ABELSON

Speaking for Controlled Healthcare Insurance Corp., the incomparable Ernestine tells a patient, “Life itself is a pre-existing condition. Our prescription for it: Don’t get sick!” That’s the only way to stay ahead of the insurance companies who’s only concern is profits. As Ernestine says, “It takes big bucks to run an insurance company, medical care is the least of it.”

Ed Asner explains what your health care premiums pay for–and a lot of it’s not health care. About 30% goes to paperwork, advertising, lobbyists, obscene executive salaries, and profiteering. That’s why we need single payer, California OneCare.