Tomorrow in New York, Occupy Wall Street is holding a march against American profit-driven health care. Marchers plan to stop in front of Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield, WellCare and St. Vincent’s Community Hospital in the city. The movement’s new web site, OWS Healthcare, is specifically devoted to promoting actions in support of universal health care. Here’s hoping for a massive mobilization from our friends in New York on Wednesday!
Sylvia@californiaonecare.org
Last weekend, I checked out Occupy Wall Street’s satellite protest in downtown Los Angeles, Occupy Los Angeles. I was impressed by how well it was organized in a relatively short amount of time. Along with the tents that protesters are calling their homes indefinitely, were areas reserved for donations, food, Web broadcasting and even a makeshift library. Groups of people set aside space for intense discussions on issues of the day. There is a real community there, a place where people work together and share resources as well as ideas. It’s the kind of community we are fighting for now in this new revolution – one where camaraderie, compassion and the common good are all valued.
Some complain that the occupiers’ message isn’t clear. “What do they want? What are their demands?” the skeptics ask. But those who ask these questions aren’t paying attention. I believe the message is very clear. People want to remove the vise-like grip that corporate America has on every aspect of their lives. In a democracy, the people rule – not corporations. Health care is an essential part of life that corporations have absolute control over in America.
A small group of billionaires operating in shiny glass towers with virtually no accountability to the public are deciding who lives and who dies. These health insurance executives – denizens of Wall Street – have set themselves up as Greek gods on Mount Olympus. It’s time to topple them from that perch, and turn our healthcare system over to the people. For in a democracy, we the people – not the corporations – should run our health care system via a national health insurance model: Medicare for All. Below are voices from actions around the country, talking about how a broken healthcare system has affected their lives.
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Dr. Margaret Flowers of Physicians for a National Health Program confronts health insurance executives in Washington D.C. as part of an action by October2011.org, a group in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Personal stories from Occupy Wall Street in New York.
Occupy Philadelphia
Occupy Minneapolis
Occupy Denver
Occupy Oakland
Sylvia@californiaonecare.org
by nyceve
As the debate played out during the contentious summer of 2009 before the passage of the Affordable Care Act, many were deeply concerned that the insurance industry would escalate its war against the American people. We feared and predicted even more egregious price gouging.
It seems all our fears were justified.
As we know, even insured Americans are delaying or forgoing needed and necessary healthcare because the high deductible junk insurance they have (which is all they can afford), requires huge out-of-pocket costs, making healthcare a luxury. And please keep in mind, we’re talking about people with insurance. Insured Americans are consuming less health not because they don’t need to see a doctor, but because they can’t afford to do so. This is what the insurers want, they collect our premiums, sell us high deductible insurance which we can’t even afford to use.
A new study just released by the Kaiser Family Foundation paints as grim a picture of the U.S. healthcare system and its unaffordability, as I have ever read. It is ghastly and our healthcare system is on the precipice of collapse.
After several years of relatively modest premium increases, annual premiums for employer-sponsored family health coverage increased to $15,073 this year, up 9 percent from last year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation/Health Research & Educational Trust 2011 Employer Health Benefits Survey released today. On average, workers pay $4,129 and employers pay $10,944 toward those annual premiums.
Premiums increased significantly faster than workers’ wages (2.1 percent) and general inflation (3.2 percent). Since 2001, family premiums have increased 113 percent, compared with 34 percent for workers’ wages and 27 percent for inflation.“This year’s nine percent increase in premiums is especially painful for workers and employers struggling through a weak recovery,” Kaiser President and CEO Drew Altman, Ph.D. said.
You should not be surprised at this terrible and deeply demoralizing state of affairs. There is little (or nothing) in the Affordable Care Act which requires insurers to make their junk products affordable. Even worse, despite paying a huge percentage of our dwindling income to buy insurance, Americans are paying for almost useless policies. I define a useless policy as one with high deductibles and high out-of-pocket costs. As the economy continues to show little or no improvement, even workers with insurance are not getting the care they need to do all the costs they are expected to shoulder.
And to make a bad situation even more troubling, the added benefits, insurers are now required to provide due to the passage of the Affordable Care Act, are giving them the cover to raise rates to unconscionable levels and ‘blame’ the ACA.
Throughout this year, major health insurers have defended higher premiums — and higher profits — saying that their expenses would rise once the economy recovered and people believed they could again afford medical care. The struggling economy will probably keep suppressing demand for medical care, particularly as people pay a larger share of their own medical bills through higher deductibles and co-payments, according to benefits consultants and others. About three-quarters of workers now pay part of the bill when they go see a doctor, and nearly a third have a deductible of at least $1,000 if they have single coverage, up from just one in 10 in 2006, according Kaiser.
The Affordable Care Act was written without teeth or strong enforcement mechanisms, but that is old, sad news. To be fair, the ACA allocates money to the states to police rate hikes, but it is powerless to stop them, and many believe this is really window dressing to give cover to the politicians and to make the very gullible American people think the government is trying to bring us some relief.
Every day in America, 3,700 families file for bankruptcy caused by illness and medical bills, and that number is rising. This shameful situation happens in no other wealthy democracy. It would be a scandal anywhere else. Most medically bankrupt families were middle-class before they suffered financial setbacks. Roughly 60 percent of them had attended college; 20 percent of families included a military veteran or active-duty soldier.
Most astoundingly, 60 percent of the individuals whose illness led to bankruptcy had private, for-profit health insurance when they got sick. Don’t we buy health insurance to avoid financial ruin? High deductibles lead directly to bankruptcy and foreclosure. To make matters worse, they cause people to postpone needed care. All of which lead to higher insurance company profits.
You should be very, very scared to be an American citizen. I’m sorry to say this, it’s the truth.
Nyceve is a board member for California OneCare. Originally posted in the DailyKos.
When California Senate Health Committee Chair Ed Hernandez’s foot dragging earlier this year nearly killed the single payer bill, SB 810, outright, I wondered whether health insurance industry lobbyists had gotten to him. Hernandez, a Democrat, eventually voted to move SB 810 out of committee, but only after a massive amount of arm-twisting by universal healthcare advocates and a public dressing down by a Democratic Party activist at the state convention. However, weeks after the vote, SB 810 was still placed on ice, to be re-introduced in January.
Hernandez then complained about another popular bill, AB 52, that would have allowed state regulators to pre-approve insurance industry rate increases. He voted that one out of committee too, but said he wouldn’t support a final version unless changes were made. Under industry pressure, AB 52 soon died in the State Senate in late August. Well, turns out there may have been a reason for all of Hernandez’s hemming and hawing. According to an investigation by Think Progress, he’s been on the health lobbyists’ payroll:
State Sen. Ed Hernandez (D), the chair of the health committee, voted for AB 52 but told the press he could not support the bill in its current form. Hernandez’s income is boosted by about $69,000 a year in payments from Kaiser Health Plans, the state’s largest insurer (and one of AB 52′s most prominent opponents) in rent at an office building owned by Hernandez. The unusual arrangement might present a serious conflict of interest, but Hernandez’s spokesman told ThinkProgress that the rent payments began shortly before Hernandez entered the legislature, and that Kaiser maintains a community outreach center in the senator’s building. (emphasis is the author’s)
Hernandez’s spokesman can try to spin this stinky arrangement until he gets dizzy. It doesn’t matter that the rent payments were made before Hernandez became a state senator. What’s problematic is that Hernandez continued this financial relationship with Kaiser while still sitting on the state Senate Health Committee. At the very least, Hernandez should have recused himself from the vote on AB 52. It makes one wonder if there are any other little arrangements the senator has got going with his health lobbyist buddies? The stench of corruption here is just too great to ignore. It’s no wonder that we, the people of California, and the United States can’t get the kind of legislation passed that will truly address the dire problems we face, which includes replacing a morally bankrupt and deadly healthcare system with one that provides high-quality and affordable care to all. Our democracy has been hijacked by unethical business interests funneling money to our so-called “representatives” by means that may be legal in this country, but elsewhere, such “arrangements” would be called by another name.
Sylvia@californiaonecare.org
