Before I tell you another truly heart wrenching only in America story, I'd like to give you an update on the Blanche Lincoln/Mike Ross ad.
First, we listened to your comments, and removed the word "KILL" from the grab page of the ad, so be assured, we take all your suggestions very seriously and we act on them when possible. And thank you for the excellent feedback.
The ad has hit a big nerve, and in a few short days, we've raised $50,000. We need $78,000 to get it blasted across Arkansas.
PLEASE HELP GET US OVER THE TOP. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO GET THIS AD ON THE AIR IN ARKANSAS.
Turning now, to uninsured diabetics.
I made this utterly sad (but tragically self-evident) discovery about uninsured diabetic children having to reuse dull needles, which result in painful insulin injections, while reading an article about the FEHBP in Kaiser health News.
As many of you know, the Federal Employee Health Benefits Plan has been a pet peeve for many of us around here for many years.
We're not talking about the benefits received by federal employees. I repeat, we're not at all opposed to the benefits received by non-elected federal employees. We're specifically addressing the FEHBP benefits our elected officials happily avail themselves of courtesy of the taxpayers. It's one thing to be outraged int he abstract, it's quite another to feel the sucker punch as these animals Congresspeople spew forth from every cable channel about whether we can afford to provide the American people with healthcare, and that we're "moving too quickly".
Do you know that you and I subsidize approximately 72% of the premiums that members of Congress and U.S. Senators pay. This is outrageous.
Kaiser peels back the curtain on this luxurious healthcare the rest of us can only dream about. Keep in mind what follows are the sorts of plans and levels of service your Congressional Representative can choose from.
Your representative, and your senator and his or her family are fully insulated from small and insignificant things like uninsured children having to reuse dull insulin needles.
"This is what keeps me alive," says 13-year-old Toni Bethea, as she picks a tiny glass bottle off the kitchen counter of her home in Washington, D.C. The clear liquid inside is insulin. Toni has Type 1 diabetes.
. . .It helps that her mother, Rhonda Dorsey, has good insurance, which she gets as a federal employee. She's covered by the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, or FEHBP. It insures 8 million federal workers, retirees and their families — and members of Congress. That federal health insurance program has been held up — by the President, lawmakers and other players in the health care debate — as a model of the kind of good insurance that should be available to all Americans.
A lot of people think the FEHBP is a public plan--it's not. It's the free market at its best, choice, competition, and a huge pool of customers, which is holding down to one extent or another the skyrocketing costs the rest of us face.
Max Baucus, Evan Bayh, Joe Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln, Mike Ross, and all the others, have the bountiful choices which they seek to deny us by trying to kill the public option. Choice is good for them, but not for us.
And imagine a 2.1% premium increase!
Federal employees get a lot of choice. That's what makes the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program stand out compared to other insurance. In the Washington, D.C. area, there are at least 16 health plans to choose from. Nationwide, according to a new report by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust, most companies offer only one health plan to their employees, and just one percent of companies offer three or more.
The federal Office of Personnel Management conducts annual negotiations with each health plan to set benefits and rates. That has allowed it to claim some success in constraining cost growth. But last year Blue Cross and Blue Shield — which covers about 60 percent of FEHBP enrollees — increased the premium for its standard option by 13 percent. As a result, the average for all federal plans went up 7 percent. The year before, the annual premium increase was just 2.1 percent.
What did 13-year-old Toni Bethea learn at the summer camp for diabetic children she attended?
Toni learned that the children who don't have insurance reuse their needles and dull needles hurt--alot.
Toni knows she's fortunate. This summer, she went to a summer camp for kids with diabetes. And she saw what kids do when they don't have good health insurance. "At camp they provide you with supplies, but I've seen kids who have saved their needles and taken them with them," she says. "Even though you weren't like supposed to, they would kind of sneak them just to make sure they would have something when they got back home."
Toni and Rhonda know that when people don't have good insurance, they're so desperate they will even reuse a needle. "It gets dull. And so it really hurts. But you have to have insulin, just like I said," Rhonda says. "I mean, without insulin, Toni would die. So you, take the pain in order to live."
[emphasis added]
Apparently reusing needles is what many uninsured diabetics must do, despite being citizens of the richest country on the planet.
WE'RE ASKING YOU TO SUPPORT THE WORK SECURE A PUBLIC OPTION.
THERE ARE A GROUP OF PEOPLE WORKING LITERALLY DAY AND NIGHT TRYING TO SECURE A PUBLIC OPTION. WE RECEIVE VERY SMALL STIPENDS (FOR LIVING EXPENSES), BASED ENTIRELY ON YOUR GENEROSITY.
PLEASE DONATE WHATEVER YOU CAN. WE RELY ON YOUR FINANCIAL SUPPORT, AND YOU HAVE BEEN AMAZING.
HEALTHCARE REFORM WILL REVEAL THE CHARACTER OF OUR NATION, WE CANNOT FAIL.
PLEASE HELP US WIN THIS FIGHT FOR REAL HEALTHCARE FOR ALL AMERICANS.
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