Single Payer Minute October 30, 2008
In this episode we look at how grassroots citizens are confronting the public health hazard of a for profit health insurance industry. First by exposing the cause of the problem and then delivering some preventive medicine.
News You Can Use
Who would have guessed:
* The New York Times reports that Women Buying Health Policies Pay a Penalty .Women generally pay "much more" than men for identical individual health insurance policies, according to data from insurance companies and online brokers.
* Forbes explains that Humana is reporting a 40% decrease in Q3 Earnings. Humana investors had expected that the company’s Medicare business would be strong, but rising costs caused the insurance provider to lower its guidance. Further disappointing investors was the company’s lower earnings numbers for the quarter due to large losses on investments.
Health Care Roadshow Field Report
By Donna Smith
PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania – When the day began, I sipped coffee with Hilda and Krikor Sarkisyan of Northridge, California, in a hotel restaurant as we waited to go confront the Cigna executives who denied their 17 year old daughter’s liver transplant. Nataline died last December. As this day closed, I sat across from an RN who was crying with sadness and rage for the Sarkisyan’s loss and the absolute horror of what we experienced together in the Cigna lobby today.
If ever we needed proof of why the for-profit health insurance industry cannot be trusted with our health and well-being, we saw it today. We saw today the cruelty; we saw today all the reasons why we cannot trust that which we know we cannot trust. The lack of human compassion and the outright obscenity of the broken system have somehow codified into reality for us all a pattern of delays and denials of care that never can be reversed. Allowing a child to die — someone else’s child — has somehow become acceptable behavior, and we have allowed chronic abuse of our trust to flourish and to be explained away by insurance executives who cannot tell the truth.
Read the rest of the this at guaranteedhealthcare.org