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."
Please watch this introductory video.
If I'm not mistaken, and I'm not an electoral specialist, we win Ohio, we win the election. We also need to win the other battlegrounds like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Florida.
How do we do this?
A repetitive and "we feel your pain" populist message including at every bend in the road, a harsh and no-holds-barred condemnation of the for-profit insurance industry, will resonate like nothing else with independent voters.
And it's up to us to hammer stories like this, because you can take it to the bank, that Wolf Blitzer, Chris Matthews, CNN, even sadly Keith Olberman, don't discuss the real bread and butter issues like this.
Patients suffer as care, coverage limits collide
Physicians say insurers intrude on treatment
A Blade investigation, including interviews with about 100 physicians and a national survey of doctors with more than 900 responses, revealed that a growing number of doctors believe there’s an epidemic of insurers dictating medical-treatment decisions.
Increasing health-care costs and an influx of expensive drugs and tests, combined with an aging population, set off a health-care crisis in the United States.
Contending with soaring costs, insurers changed the business of health care by requiring preauthorizations, mandating cheaper drugs, and tightening controls on treatment decisions.
http://www.toledoblade.com/...
Managed Profit, Mangled Care.
This is one of the most explosive videos I've seen in a very long time.
Dr Michael Connair, vice president of the Federation of Physicians and Dentists: "Were it not for the Department of Justice, I believe the managed care system would have been ripped apart by patients and doctors years ago."
If you want to end this, you vote Obama-Biden.
Dr. Dorothy Levine: "Children who have major weight problems, I can't get a simple nutritionist . . .I get threatened, the patient gets threatened and the care gets denied."
Cruel, heartless insurers.
Delay, Deny and Deceive.
Delays and denials
The Blade's eight-month investigation captured the stories of physicians in rural and urban areas, those in solo and group practices, specialists and primary-care practitioners, and physicians in private practice and those who work for health-care systems. Some were members of physican associations; some were not.
Doctor after doctor expressed the same worries that their clinical decisions are increasingly overruled by insurers, at times harming patients.
The delays and denials affect all types of patients in a multitude of ways, doctors say — from grade-school children who terrorize classmates when insurance won't pay for their behavior medication to a man who waited weeks to learn whether he would be covered for a second opinion on a potentially life-saving kidney-liver transplant.
http://www.toledoblade.com/...
[emphasis added]
If you want to end tragic stories like the one you're about to hear, you vote Obama-Biden.
But depravity like this, as you know, is not unique to Ohio. Though, if we are to win, this is the issue which will put Obama-Biden over the top in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and all the other contested swing states.
Here's another little gem from the New Haven Register.
One more gem from the lips of McMansion. This is a guy who thinks all Americans, especially the 50 million uninsured can just waltz into a doctor's office and get things checked. This ought to get as much attention as his 7 or 11 houses.
"But I want to again urge all Americans to wear sunscreen, particularly this summer, stay out of the sun as much as possible, wear sunscreen, and if you ever have any slight discoloration, please go to your dermatologist or your doctor and get it checked up on," Mr. McCain said, wearing a blue Navy cap against the California sun.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Yeah, right, "any slight discoloration", for say $300 for 5 minutes, when gas is $4.00 a gallon and a trip to the supermarket is to buy rice and chicken remnants because everything else is unaffordable.
I don't normally do this, but here's a digg link for this diary, and here's another Digg link for the Toledo Blade series.
Update: Thanks to your incredibly generous diggs, this diary is now # 4 on the Hot in 2008 U.S. Elections list on Digg.
And so is the Toledo Blade!
Update #2:
You guys are something else. You've made this diary # 2 on the front page of Digg. Most important, we're spreading the word to the Obama campaign how serious we are about authentic health care reform and what they need to do to win the damn election. Thank you, thank you to everyone.
And to all those suffering the inhumanity of our depraved healthcare system, stay strong a little longer, help is finally on the way.
Let's win this God Damn election!