Until we get rid of the health insurance corporations, we can at least fight back, shame them, and force them to do the right thing.
We did with the tragic story of Nataline Sarkisyan.
And now, Kim Kutcher enters the stage.
She’s in full-on patient revolt mode, working with fellow nurses to get the back surgery she needs to avoid a lifetime of disability. We’ll take a look at what’s happening and why. It’s an important template that someday might help your friends or family—and ask you to lend a hand, or at least a couple of dialing fingers.
...cross-posted at the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association’s Breakroom Blog...
She’s a 46-year-old nurse in Orange County. Years of hospital work has given her a degenerative disc disease. She wants to return to work and in order to do so needs a disc replacement. Shouldn’t be an issue, right? She’s paid years of premiums to Blue Cross for coverage if anything goes wrong—and she has a 26-year-old friend just approved by Blue Cross for the same procedure.
Not so fast, said Blue Cross. They want Kutcher to instead fuse two of her disks together, a high risk and painful procedure that mean she will never be able to return to the rigorous job she loves, nursing, and that has enough side effects that she might face a lifetime of disability.
So Kutcher has put her house up as collateral, scheduled the surgery for Tuesday, and is now in a high-stakes battle with Blue Cross to make them do the right thing, save her house, save her back, and pay for the surgery.
The National Nurses Organizing Committee—which is both a union and a network of 80,000 activist RNs nationwide—has taken up her case, and here’s how it’s gone. We believe we’ve generated hundreds of nurse phone calls to the corporate office, or that’s what they’ve told us anyway. They’ve stopped answering their phones, transferred her case from her previous manager to "corporate legal," and claim they’re preparing a statement right now. We’ll see what that means.
Hey why don’t you call, say, their corporate PR person Peggy Hines on her cellphone and tell her that Blue Cross needs to do the right thing for Kim Kutcher: 805-857-4099. Or if you’re struggling with insurance corporations, tell your story here.
Now back to big picture, you know who loves Blue Cross? Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, who’s carrying one of the "individual mandate" bills that would require every American to purchase their terrible products. Wyden spoke to AHIP—the health insurers lobbying group—this week and said, per journalist Ezra Klein:
"If your profession decides – as it did in 1993 and 1994 – to go out and spend millions of dollars fighting to preserve the status quo, you may delay reform for awhile but you will increase the likelihood of a government run health system with no role for the private sector."
Wyden worked hard not to blame insurers for their worst practices. he blamed their markets. He blamed their "stockholders and fiduciaries" who demand this behavior from them. He sympathized with their predicament.
That’s right, Wyden is working overtime to save the bacon of Blue Cross, CIGNA, and that whole gang—-and he is fear-mongering about single-payer healthcare. Boo! Matthew Yglesias reacts:
But when I hear about how Ron Wyden and AHIP are getting along marvelously I don't think "Oh, look, the prospects for reform are better than I thought" I think "Oh, look, we're going to get an expensive-and-crappy reform."
Why don’t you call Wyden’s office and tell him to end his love affair with the health insurance campaign contributors: (202) 224-5244.
The good news? Andrew Cuomo, at least, is one politician with the gutsand integrity to take on health insurers:
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said Thursday he issued new subpoenas to Aetna Inc., Cigna Corp., UnitedHealth Group Inc. and WellPoint Inc., and other health insurers in a broadening investigation of possible fraud costing consumers hundreds of millions of dollars.
Cuomo is also looking to subpoena testimony from the chief executives of those companies, as well as from executives of Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield, Excellus, and the combined Group Health Inc. and HIP Health Plan.
...
Cuomo says he believes the companies used the UnitedHealth Group-owned Ingenix to set rates, which resulted in consumers being reimbursed at unfair and unjustifiably low rates. Low reimbursements mean higher out-of-pocket costs for consumers when they choose
or need physicians outside their health plans.
Finally, this in interesting: the SEIU United Healthcare Workers West are sponsoring a visit from a Chinese labor dissident who has been sharply criticial of SEIU International for cutting deals with his repressive government.