Special Note: Important information.
The heroic California Nurses Association who with your generous support spearheaded the fight for Nataline Sarkisyan and Nick Colombo, and a variety of other California and national single-payer organizations, will be staging signficant protests on June 19th in San Francisco outside the Moscone Convention Center West where AHIP will be holding its annual meeting.
38,000 insurance industry executives will be in attendance, and they will know we mean business. I'll be there and I hope as many Bay area people as possible can get away for an hour or so to join in this important day of protest.
Additional details will follow.
Remember a week or so ago, I suggested you pay attention to the New York Times list of the top emailed stories. I think of the Times email list as a barometer into the psyche of a certain swath of the population.
Say Bye Bye to $20.00 co-pays:
Today's top emailed story is about prescription drugs. It describes a horrifying turn of events. In record numbers insurance companies are refusing to pay for a variety of expensive lifesaving medications.
This is scary, scary business, dear friends.
Co-Payments Go Way Up for Drugs With High Prices
Health insurance companies are rapidly adopting a new pricing system for very expensive drugs, asking patients to pay hundreds and even thousands of dollars for prescriptions for medications that may save their lives or slow the progress of serious diseases.
With the new pricing system, insurers abandoned the traditional arrangement that has patients pay a fixed amount, like $10, $20 or $30 for a prescription, no matter what the drug’s actual cost. Instead, they are charging patients a percentage of the cost of certain high-priced drugs, usually 20 to 33 percent, which can amount to thousands of dollars a month.
The system means that the burden of expensive health care can now affect insured people, too.
No one knows how many patients are affected, but hundreds of drugs are priced this new way. They are used to treat diseases that may be fairly common, including multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, hemophilia, hepatitis C and some cancers. There are no cheaper equivalents for these drugs, so patients are forced to pay the price or do without.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Today, expensive medications are going the way of the Model T. Tomorrow, it will be less expensive drugs, then, sure as night follows day, they'll cut something else as our premiums skyrocket to new levels of unaffordability.
This reality has hit a nerve. I'm not surprised. It's frightening to read about an anonymous citizen who's losing access to a drug that is quite literally keeping her alive. You know that it's only a matter of time until someone in your own family faces the same insurance industry grim reaper in a business suit.
Just Pay Your Taxes--and shut-up:
Not to digress, but it's April 14th, I just mailed my taxes. Did you? Everyone I know is talking about their taxes. You know what they're saying and asking? I'll tell you. They're wondering what do we get for our tax dollars? Everyone knows that we're the only Western nation where healthcare is a privilege, not a right. Stupid us.
In every other civilized nation, taxes fund single-payer healthcare--but not here. But we just keep paying, stupid us. Don't forget as you wait on a long slow line at the post office, that your money is paying for heavily taxpayer subsidized Congressional health benefits. That's right, healthcare for them, but not for us. Stupid us.
In the United States we find all the money we need to occupy and destroy a sovereign nation, but providing basic healthcare to all our citizens is an expense we just can't afford. Stupid us.
Class Warfare, and Yes, I'm a very Bitter American:
Back to the New York Times, this is from today's paper. It proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the scum at AHIP are setting up a huge class warfare endgame.
Here's how it goes. If health insurers pay for the expensive medication of your very sick neighbor, then your insurance premium will go up.
So let's just pit neighbor against neighbor, American against American. Cancer patients against the still healthy.
Insurers say the new system keeps everyone’s premiums down at a time when some of the most innovative and promising new treatments for conditions like cancer and rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis can cost $100,000 and more a year.
And here's the numbing, simply unbelievable money quote from the chief liar AHIP lobbyist, Karen Ignagni. Penalize the sick, or more actually, just let those who can't pay die.
That's what we're talking about here.
Private insurers began offering Tier 4 plans in response to employers who were looking for ways to keep costs down, said Karen Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, which represents most of the nation’s health insurers. When people who need Tier 4 drugs pay more for them, other subscribers in the plan pay less for their coverage.
But the new system sticks seriously ill people with huge bills, said James Robinson, a health economist at the University of California, Berkeley. "It is very unfortunate social policy," Dr. Robinson said. "The more the sick person pays, the less the healthy person pays."
Traditionally, the idea of insurance was to spread the costs of paying for the sick.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
AHIP has launched what I believe is a new web site, certainly I just recently became acquainted with it. It's called AHIP Hi-wire.
You might want to read the AHIP treatise posted there entitled, The Principles of Pricing Health Insurance. Pay attention to the section called Equity. It descibes their theory of how private insurance should be priced. Please read it, the lunacy speaks for itself.
I know you understand how depraved all this is. But do you also understand that AHIP and the special interests it represents intend to purchase 9/10ths of the seats at the healthcare negotiating table regardless of who is the next president?
Profits, profits, insurance industry profits:
Let's end by taking a look at how health insurers are faring during these dismal economic times. Let's understand what's going on here is a desperate gambit to improve the bottom line even more. Or as I've been saying for many long years now, to take our money, then deny us our care and what we've paid for.
UnitedHealth reports record revenues, profits for 2007
UnitedHealth Group reported record revenues and earnings in 2007, the company announced Tuesday.
The insurer (NYSE:UNH) reported net income of $4.65 billion, or $3.42 per diluted share, up almost 12 percent from earnings of $4.16 billion, or $2.97 per diluted share in 2006. Revenue rose 5 percent to $75.43 billion, from $71.54 billion a year ago.
. . .The company reported fourth-quarter revenue of $18.7 billion for the current year quarter, with earnings of $1.2 billion, or 92 cents per share. That compares to revenue of $18.1 billion, with earnings of $1.17 billion, or 84 cents per share, a year ago. Fourth-quarter results met analyst estimates.
. . .UnitedHealth Group CEO Stephen Hemsley said in a statement , "This was a year defined by strong earnings and financial performance."
http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/...
We'll see you on June 19th, Stephen Hemsley and Karen Ignagni.
Lots more information on the events planned for June 19th will be forthcoming.