February 28, 2010 :: Riga Listin :: No Comment Yet
The media are exploding with reports that explicitly declare that “the public opposes the current healthcare reform bills” passed by both houses of Congress. In fact, this is patently false, and any of the major polls on the subject bear this out, if one devotes the time necessary to understand the numbers. It is inaccurate to say “the public opposes”, because there is not one uniform majority of Americans opposing a specific set of initiatives in the pending reforms.
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February 28, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Republican House minority whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) said today on Meet the Press that Republicans want healthcare reform, but they favor a “common-sense, modest, incremental approach”. The statement is sly and problematic: Cantor wants to imply that incremental is responsible, playing on the emotional fetish that brings many to conservative politics, but he is simply fudging the facts and reframing an historically irresponsible approach in order to attack the president. Incremental fixes to the pervasive healthcare crisis have so far failed to reverse the trend toward ever-higher costs and ever-less-competent insurers.
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February 27, 2010 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
The Republican party’s Congressional leadership is participating in a bipartisan healthcare reform summit moderated by Pres. Barack Obama, at Blair House near the White House. The “square-table” discussion includes the leading budgetary and health policy partisans from the House and Senate, as well as Pres. Obama, Vice Pres. Biden and Sec. of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius. The president invited Republicans to “show me what you got”, and to lay out constructive alternative ideas for healthcare reform, in the interest of building consensus.
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February 20, 2010 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
The other week, men and women across California opened up their mailboxes to find a letter from Anthem Blue Cross. The news inside was jaw-dropping. Anthem was alerting almost a million of its customers that it would be raising premiums by an average of 25 percent, with about a quarter of folks likely to see their rates go up by anywhere from 35 to 39 percent. … Over the past year, as families and small business owners have struggled to pay soaring health care costs, and as millions of Americans lost their coverage, the five largest insurers made record profits of over $12 billion.
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February 12, 2010 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Blue Cross has reportedly announced plans for a massive 39% rate-hike on hundreds of thousands of customers, despite earning record profits of $4.7 billion in 2009. The announcement has spurred outrage among healthcare rights activists and public interest groups and raised the ire of the president and the Congress of the United States. The progressive pressure group MoveOn.org has launched a campaign to demand an immediate reversal of the Blue Cross rate-hike.
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February 2, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
There is talk in the House of Representatives that a “reconciliation patch” could allow the US Senate to pass a small amendment to the Senate healthcare bill, in connection with a budget reconciliation measure, could allow the Senate to provide the House with an overall bill that could pass the House of Representatives. If the Senate is able to make those necessary adjustments, there could be a comprehensive healthcare reform package passed and signed into law in the coming weeks.
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January 30, 2010 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Pres. Barack Obama yesterday attended a first-of-its-kind question and answer session, as part of a Republican Congressional caucus conference in Baltimore. The president took some aggressive questions, classed by media analysts as “grandstanding”, from some Republicans who pushed the party line on the refusal of Democrats to deal with them. Obama adroitly and with a [...]
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January 28, 2010 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Those of us in public office can respond to this reality by playing it safe and avoid telling hard truths and pointing fingers. We can do what’s necessary to keep our poll numbers high, and get through the next election instead of doing what’s best for the next generation. But I also know this: If people had made that decision 50 years ago, or 100 years ago, or 200 years ago, we wouldn’t be here tonight. The only reason we are here is because generations of Americans were unafraid to do what was hard; to do what was needed even when success was uncertain; to do what it took to keep the dream of this nation alive for their children and their grandchildren.
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January 28, 2010 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
A recent NBC/WSJ poll shows rising frustration among voters with the failure to move major reforms through Congress. But while the media have repeatedly pushed the notion that Pres. Obama may be losing favor, the NBC/WSJ poll shows 48% of people say Republicans in Congress are to blame for the nation’s unsolved problems, for their relentless obstruction of Democratic proposals, while 41% blame the Democrats in Congress, and only 27% blame Pres. Obama.
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January 27, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Pres. Barack Obama’s first official State of the Union address was an impassioned call to action, and something of a civics lesson. He reprimanded both parties in Congress, admonishing Democrats not to “run for the hills” and reminding Republicans that if they claim a leadership role by obstructing legislation, then they have an obligation to the public to participate in the process. The address artfully positioned Obama’s agenda astride the political center, leaving the Republicans little room in the center from which to attack his policies.
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January 22, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: 3 Comments
The ONLY way to make any argument of the kind that alleges the economic difficulties of 2009 are Obama’s fault is to operate absolutely and without exception on the premise that George W. Bush left Obama with a perfectly healthy, well-oiled functioning economy and zero debt. In fact, not only is that rosy picture not the case; the polar opposite is true: Barack Obama took office while the United States was experiencing its worst economic decline since the Great Depression, including near total paralysis of the banking system, unprecedented government debt, and an ethically deficient backlog of hidden borrowing that would cause deficits to escalate by as much as 1,000% in just one decade.
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January 5, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: 3 Comments
At the end of Barack Obama’s first year in office, there is controversy over the nature and extent of his accomplishments, and even some allies and supporters appear to have forgotten the atmosphere of multidirectional crisis in which Obama took office. What’s more, the steady decline in Obama’s approval ratings appears to follow very closely a shift in media reporting away from reporting facts and back to the hyper-commentary style of the run-up to the Iraq war, an atmosphere in which conservative political propaganda fares better than the facts of deliberative action.
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December 24, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
The United States Senate scheduled what might be the most important vote on domestic issues for 2009 for a special late legislative session on Christmas Eve. Republicans say Democrats are trying to manipulate the process and punish them for opposing the measure, while Democrats say obstructionist Republicans made it necessary to extend the legislative session in order to hold the vote this year. This morning, the bill passed by a vote of 60 to 39, along party lines.
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December 24, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Pres. Barack Obama took office in the midst of the worst economic recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s, with two wars in Asia and skyrocketing unemployment, record numbers of bankruptcies, a financial services industry in a state of near total paralysis and/or collapse, and declining federal revenues with which to alleviate the fast-rising federal budget deficit. Not one of those aspects of life in 2009 America was caused by anything Barack Obama did before or after assuming the presidency. Yet the new game in Washington, DC, is blaming Obama for everything everyone else failed to do, both before and after he assumed the presidency.
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December 24, 2009 :: staff :: 3 Comments
The pulitzer prize-winning news service PolitiFact.com, a fact-checking operation of the St. Petersburg Times, has awarded Sarah Palin its first ever “Lie of the Year” award, for her patently false claim that healthcare reform legislation would create “death panels”. Properly told, the lie of the year is the “death panels” claim itself, for which Palin is only partly responsible. She appears to have been responsible for the most high profile and most fundamentally false telling of the lie, though other Republican opponents of healthcare reform had falsely asserted that reimbursement for doctors who provide end of life counseling would be devoted to a campaign of euthanasia designed to eliminate the elderly and infirm.
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December 22, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The Republican party is now taking a political position radically opposed to their entire philosophical and strategic posture during the healthcare debate. Upset to learn that Sen. Ben Nelson may have won special funding guarantees to help his state provide funding for Medicaid in an economic climate where the state is facing record budget shortfalls and may have to cut funding, Sen. Lindsey Graham is now demanding full federal funding for his state’s Medicaid program. Republicans have jumped on the bandwagon and are now demanding that Medicaid funding for their states be expanded as well.
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December 21, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The United States Senate has been grappling all this year with a record number of threatened filibusters of key legislation, a problem which has held up work on issues of vital national interest and slowed economic reforms designed to help speed recovery and prevent future abuses. The healthcare reform process is now synonymous with the worst effects of the filibuster, famously used by the late Sen. Strom Thurmond to block civil rights reforms that would bring the law in line with the US Constitution.
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December 20, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
The Democratic leadership has scheduled an historic vote on healthcare reform legislation for 1:01 am Monday morning. All 100 senators are expected to participate in the vote for cloture, which would end debate and clear the way for a straight up-or-down vote on passage of the comprehensive health insurance reform package, later this week. The bill has been the subject of intense negotiation, fierce criticism and major compromise, though all of the compromise was within the ideologically diverse 60-member Democratic caucus.
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December 19, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
The last time a Patient’s Bill of Rights was within reach was roughly a decade ago, and it was supported by Democrats and Republicans alike, from Ted Kennedy to John McCain. It included the right to an appeals process so you could challenge an unfair decision by an insurance company before a third party. It included the right to choose your own doctor. It included the right to access information about what your health insurance plan means for you. And it called for a new level of transparency so that patients would know if their doctors had a conflict of interest when providing services.
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December 19, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
After nearly a full year of partisan wrangling and internecine disputes between liberal and conservative Democrats, the sponsors of healthcare reform have reportedly secured their 60th vote in the Senate, the vote needed to break a filibuster, end debate and bring the bill to a vote for passage. Once the public option for low-cost healthcare and an expansion of Medicare were stripped from the bill, Sen. Lieberman (I-CT) signed on; progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) then threatened to withhold support, but agreed to support the measure once $10 billion were set aside for community health clinics, and now, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), the last holdout, has reportedly voiced his support for the reforms.
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December 16, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), a fiercely progressive independent and a strong leader in the Democratic caucus, today introduced an amendment to extend the Medicare program to all Americans, creating a universal, single-payer healthcare plan that would be able to pay for any bills across the entire privately-administered health services sector. The Republicans demanded that the amendment be read word by word, out loud, into the record.
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December 11, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
PBS’ Newshour with Jim Lehrer covers the new round of Senate negotiations in which Democratic leaders propose foregoing the so-called “public option” in favor of a range of private industry-run non-profit insurance plans regulated by the Office of Personnel Management. Proponents of the public option say the non-profit option may not be able to provide [...]
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December 9, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Democrats in the United States Senate, in hopes of reaching a compromise on health reform legislation, are reported to be considering a plan that would scrap the so-called “public option” for low-cost, full-coverage health insurance, in favor of a non-profit plan that would be run by the private insurers themselves, but regulated through the Office of Personnel Management.
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November 30, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The United States Senate will begin deliberations on comprehensive health insurance reform legislation this week. Already there is intense criticism of the Senate’s health reform bill, from both ends of the ideological spectrum. A number of pro-business conservatives argue it is too costly and will hamper free enterprise and pro-patient progressives argue the bill is already too watered-down and needs a stronger public option, to expand coverage and reduce cost.
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November 25, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The Republican party has developed an increasingly obstructionist, radical ideology, based on fundamental distortions of the process of government and the aims of opponents. Party strategists openly admit there is a calculation that such distortions will “reframe” the Democratic agenda in a light average Americans view as hostile to their interests, and so indirectly, will generate support for the Republican party. But they have failed to produce viable policy proposals that deal with the pressing crises of this historical moment.
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November 22, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
For the first time in decades, the United States Senate has voted to open floor debate on comprehensive healthcare insurance reform legislation. All 58 Democratic members of the Senate, plus the two independents that caucus with them, voted to approve debate. 39 of the 40 Republicans voted against opening debate, except Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH), who did not vote. Though not expected to vote with Democrats today, Maine Republicans Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins were thought to be more conciliatory with regard to passing legislation containing a compromise on the public option, so their no-votes are seen as a further challenge to the Democratic majority.
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November 21, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) has announced she will vote to support cloture, which will allow debate to move forward in the Senate on healthcare insurance reform legislation. Lincoln joins other conservative Democrats, Mary Landrieu, of Louisiana, and Ben Nelson, of Nebraska, in supporting her party leadership’s call for a vote to begin debate on the healthcare insurance reform legislation.
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November 15, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
What did Jon Voight mean by suggesting that Pres. Obama is the first and only president in our history to shame “our beautiful White House”, alleging he plans a socialist takeover that would undermine the Constitution? In fact, Pres. Obama is significantly more centrist on a range of issues than were Jimmy Carter, Lyndon Johnson, [...]
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November 9, 2009 :: Webb Tisch :: No Comment Yet
The progressive organizing group MoveOn.org has announced huge success in collecting funds to mount primary challenges to any Democratic senator who acts to block an up-or-down vote on healthcare reform. In just one week, their Health Reform Accountability Pledge campaign collected $3,578,117 in pledges.
The organization’s statement about the fundraising success reads:
That’s how much progressives [...]
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November 8, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Last night, every Republican but one voted against the House of Representatives’ monumental healthcare reform package. Anh Joseph Cao has said he came to understand the need to vote to pass the sweeping healthcare reform program, after listening to the concerns of constituents desperate to find a way to secure reliable, affordable coverage for basic and/or emergency healthcare. A release on his website reads as follows…
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November 8, 2009 :: Denver Lessing :: One Comment
The Democrats celebrated a major legislative victory last night, when they passed historic health reform legislation. Only one Republican joined in passing the measure, despite a last-minute success in attaching a partial ban on federal funding for abortions. With that provision in the final bill, the near unanimous Republican no-vote was effectively a vote against [...]
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November 8, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
At 10:59 pm Saturday evening, a 15-minute vote was called. Members of the House were then to vote yea or nay by electronic device. By 11:01 pm, the vote was 197 to 184 and moving quickly. The vote tally will not be final until the Speaker drops the gavel to close the vote. By 11:03 pm, 36 Democrats had voted against the measure, making the special Saturday vote a case of high legislative drama.
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November 7, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Pres. Obama has joined the push on Capitol Hill to pass healthcare reform. Last evening and this morning have brought a series of meetings with House leadership to orchestrate a majority vote to pass healthcare reform, possibly today. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) last night met with conservative Democrats and representatives from the [...]
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November 6, 2009 :: Webb Tisch :: 2 Comments
The radical fringe of the Republican party today gathered to hear Michelle Bachmann call for open rebellion against the government. Signs were held up in front of the US Capitol showing a Nazi mass grave and calling it “healthcare”. Other signs showed the president as an evil villain and calling for “hunting season” against moderate Republicans. The rally, which Rep. Bachmann called a “press conference”, is now being called the most visible admission the party is being taken over by a message of hate.
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November 2, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Conservative Democrats in the House of Representatives have fought hard to make the public option, and therefore healthcare reform broadly, both less effective and more expensive. How and why they did so is puzzling: while claiming they wanted to contain costs, they went about attacking the most salient cost-cutting aspects of the plan.
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October 27, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Healthcare Reform :: Two Senate Democrats have pledged not to aid Republicans in blocking a full Senate vote in healthcare reform legislation. That moves the Democratic majority closer to the 60 votes needed to avoid a filibuster and bring the bill to a floor vote that will require only 50 votes plus one. This means the public option is now far mor likely to enter into the final legislation, as majorities in both houses support it.
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October 20, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Insurers campaign to kill healthcare may be helping renew support for the public option, as Congress prepares to vote. A shift in subsidies is driving a clean energy boom in the American west, and emissions legislation is likely to pass Congress this year. Financial regulatory reform will establish a Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Immigration and gay-rights reform will likely wait till 2010.
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October 14, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
The National Association of Free Clinics (NAFC) —online at freeclinics.us— is seeking donations to help fund a campaign of massive free health clinics around the country. The organization represents and supports a network of free health clinics of varying types around the country. But to help spur support for much-needed healthcare reform legislation, the organization wants to set up much-needed mass free clinic events in states where Democratic senators have not yet promised to stop a Republican filibuster.
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October 14, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign demonstrated an unprecedented level of achievement for organizing new voters and winning donations from lower-income voters, then mobilizing millions of supporters to fan out across the country and disseminate the campaign’s message of positive change. Republican opponents of healthcare reform are engaged in a high-stakes political gamble, banking on the [...]
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October 14, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) joined every Democrat on the Senate finance committee in passing healthcare reform through to the full Senate in a 14 to 9 vote. Snowe said before the vote that “when history calls, history calls”, indicating that her vote for passage was motivated by an awareness of the historical call to make [...]
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October 13, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The health insurance industry has released a sponsored “study” to show that if the Senate finance committee’s version of healthcare reform were to pass, they would explode costs over the next few years by as much as 40%. The report is being greeted with outrage, as the insurance firms, which stand to reap possibly hundreds of billions in new business from expanded coverage, appear to be trying to extort a strict universal mandate with harsh penalties for noncompliance.
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October 11, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Dick Armey is the latest Republican to use language of incitement to promote lies about Pres. Obama’s health reform agenda. Armey says proposed reforms are “ruthless” in their treatment of healthcare recipients. But just about the only truths in his comments are that there are in fact health reforms being proposed and that they have something to do with healthcare recipients.
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October 7, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
One in 91 American children is now reported to be afflicted with autism spectrum disorder. A number of potential culprits has been suggested over the years, as autism figures have steadily risen, including vaccines, antibiotics, hormones, pesticides, coal waste and radiation.
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October 5, 2009 :: Webb Tisch :: 2 Comments
Something seems very wrong with Max Baucus. The Democratic senator whose party placed him in the chairmanship of the Senate finance committee, charged by Pres. Obama with crafting legislation that could achieve the president’s stated goals, while bringing centrist Republicans on board, has become one of the chief proponents of the very arguments entrenched corporate-interest Republicans are making to try to kill the Democratic reforms.
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October 4, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
The American people have to start taking back the process of healthcare provision from the dysfunctional private insurance industry. If private, not-for-profit healthcare insurance cooperatives can meet some of the standards of existing charitable health organizations, they may be able to launch a coordinated regional and even national network of institutions able to rival and compete with private for-profit insurers, without having to match the massive wealth insurers have amassed.
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September 28, 2009 :: Denver Lessing :: No Comment Yet
The vehement opposition being engineered by the Republican party against the market-oriented “public option” is proof the party does not favor market diversification or consumer choice, but rather rigged games that give huge payouts to specific interests. The Republicans’ argument is that private insurers should not diversify the plans they offer or have to compete in a more dynamic and diverse marketplace.
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September 24, 2009 :: staff :: One Comment
The legislature of the state of Massachusetts has voted to grant Gov. Deval Patrick (D) the power to appoint an interim replacement for the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D). The move means the Democratic party will see its fragile 60-vote majority in the United States Senate restored, in time for crucial votes on healthcare reform this fall. Today, Gov. Patrick has named Paul Grattan Kirk, Jr. to the interim post.
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September 23, 2009 :: staff :: 2 Comments
The President’s plan prohibits insurance companies from rescinding coverage that has already been purchased except in cases of fraud. In most states, insurance companies can cancel a policy if any medical condition was not listed on the application – even one not related to a current illness or one the patient didn’t even know about. A recent Congressional investigation found that over five years, three large insurance companies cancelled coverage for 20,000 people, saving them from paying $300 million in medical claims – $300 million that became either an obligation for the patient’s family or bad debt for doctors and hospitals.
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September 22, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell
The healthcare reform debate has been steered so far largely by efforts from conservative political action groups and insurance company lobbying efforts to sow fear and confusion about the nature and the intended effects of reforms being proposed by Pres. Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress. Now, Will [...]
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September 22, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
This article began as a response to a very heated comment left by one user of the Open Salon network who seems to be a physician, based on some of his phrasing. The usefulness of the exchange is meaningful, because the commenter is a physician who is very afraid of some of the key elements of the proposed healthcare reform framework. (As a margin note: the AMA —the doctors’ biggest national association— favors the proposed reforms and says they will help both doctors and patients.)
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