The healthcare debate continues as our congress and senate ready themselves for spring break. Yesterday, attention was brought to the CEO’s of major insurance companies as protestor’s marched to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Washington, D.C. and proceeded to proclaim a “citizens arrest” on insurance executives who had gathered there for a policy meeting. It was reported that more than 5,000 protestors were involved. The protest was relatively peaceful and there were no arrests. In California, locally, citizens ran a fax campaign, where local insurance companies were faxed wanted posters for their CEO’s.
Public option would impact private coverage
This flourish of citizen activity happened just prior to President Obama’s Wednesday trip to St. Louis to build steam for his insurance reform package, which is drawing heavy fire from both left and right. Many of his supporters will not support the bill unless it includes a Public Option. According to a CNN Poll, 61% of Americans favor the public option. Even the alternative of expanding Medicare to people 55 and over has been taken off the table. The idea of a Public Option has been met with avid contention by the Republicans. Judson Bergen with Fox News states that “…this [the public option] would lead to considerably cheaper premiums and could cause millions more people to leave private coverage.” Scott Stanzel, former deputy press secretary to President Bush, in a report for Fox News stated that “They [Republicans] essentially have to go silent on what the impacts of that public option could be.”
The numbers are rising
An associated press poll has found there is “widespread hunger for improvements to the healthcare system.” The White House “Numbers Campaign” has yet to interpret the significant numbers of people who die each year without insurance which, according to a report in the American Journal of Public Health has reached 45,000. Tuesday’s White House number was $1,115 which is the “average monthly premium for company sponsored health insurance.” Wednesday’s number is 8. According to Nancy-Ann DeParle of the White House Staff, the number is significant because “every minute 8 people are denied coverage” and “8 is the number of people hired by special interests to influence health reform for every member of congress.”
18% of Southern California without health insurance
Southern California in particular struggles with the health insurance issue because so many workers here are freelance and work project to project in the volatile film and entertainment industry. CNN reported on Paul Hannon, a freelance photographer, who at 45 died of a ruptured appendix because he did not have insurance. According to a study by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, 6.5 million people in California are without insurance. 80.2% of those uninsured are working. In February, involuntary part time workers increased from 8.3 to 8.8 million, with many losing their healthcare benefit. According to a report by Orange County City Data18% of those living in Orange County, California are without health insurance.
According to David Jones of The Oval Office, “The House will vote when – and if? – Hoyer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi determine they have enough support to actually pass a bill.” If 45,000 people are dying a year due to lack of coverage, that means approximately 123 people die every day. Every day congress stalls and contrives to diminish the potential of this reform 123 people die. Can we wait?
Note: This article erroneously referred to 15% of Orange County population being uninsured cited from an article reporting from The California Wellness Group. This has been corrected to site a study from the Orange County city data which reflects 18%.
For more information, see:
UCLA Center for Health Policy Research
Health Insurance Coverage for California Legislative Districts
Comments
A majority of the American people WANT the public option! The failure of Congress to pass healthcare with the public option would only prove that the insurance industry has way too much influence.
The lobbyists play their game well. First they outright oppose H/C reform.......then they say "we will help you write the legislation" to twist it into something which benefits them (insurance industry).......and then they let us fight for WHAT THEY WANT! Wake up people! 41 (Nine to go!) Senators have signed letter to say they would vote for healthcare with a public option. Call AND write your Senator today. Thank them if they signed and demand that they sign on if they have not. It is time they honor the wishes of the people and NOT the insurance industry!
This is not about Democrats or Republicans......it is about the will of the American people! If they do not respect the wishes of the people....THROW THEM OUT!
Joseph Pijanowski
Find instant medical insurance for you from www.bit.ly/atGzeD
It's actually more than twice that many that die each day in the US from lack of healthcare. That Harvard study looks at only lack of insurance. Other studies go beyond. Google the title of this 2008 study, "Measuring The Health Of Nations: Updating An Earlier Analysis". Look at the charts at all the links. They show that of the 19 richest OECD countries, the US now has the highest health care amenable mortality rate by far. (Google "health care amenable mortality" if you don't know what it is.) They found that reducing this rate to the 3 top-performing countries' average would cause 101,000 fewer deaths annually; 101,000 Americans die annually from lack of healthcare and public health policy - not just via being uninsured. (Canada has a rate very much closer to this average than the US.)
Americans want Obama's health care reform like they want a bullet in the head. Health insurance is not a right. It is a privilege that must be paid for. No money, no insurance, its that simple.
You honestly think that insurance companies have so much power the they have been able to block this legislation? Wake up! its the people who have stood up and said, we don't want this kind of reform. I would trust any private insurance company before I would trust the government to run health insurance, and god forbid they make a profit and hire more employees in the process. The profit and competition is what keeps them in check. Govt has no such incentive.
For-profit corporations, having no obligation to promote the general welfare, can be trusted with our lives? Google "I Am Not a Dog" and see the horrible truth that PROFIT KILLS: "The documents revealed Guardian had compiled a "hit list" of its costliest members, including patients with muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, brain injury, and paralysis. Guardian executives referred to us all as "dogs" and "trainwrecks," and they debated how and when to dump us from the rolls." Scientific proof that PROFIT KILLS: (2002) A systematic review and meta-analysis of studies comparing mortality rates of private for-profit and private not-for-profit hospitals....(2004) Payments for care at private for-profit and private not-for-profit hospitals: a systematic review and meta-analysis (For-profit hospitals have 2% higher death rates and 19% higher costs because of the need to generate profit to satisfy investors, the significantly higher administrative costs, and the large executive bonuses.)
More proof that THE LACK OF GOVERNMENT KILLS: (2000) Relation between income inequality and mortality in Canada and in the United States (Canada has no association between income inequality and mortality. The US has a strong such association for those under 65 but no such association for those at least 65 - American Medicare saves the day. Such an association existed in Canada before nonprofit universal healthcare.) ---- (2008) Association of Insurance with Cancer Care Utilization and Outcomes (The uninsured have 60% higher overall cancer mortality.) ---- (2009) Lack of insurance negatively affects trauma mortality in US children (3 times higher death rate for uninsured child trauma patients) ---- (6) (2009) Downwardly Mobile: The Accidental Cost of Being Uninsured (almost 2 times higher death rate for uninsured adult trauma patients) ---- (7) (2009) Analysis of 23 million US hospitalizations: uninsured children have higher all-cause in-hospital mortality (60% higher).
It doesn't matter whether healthcare is a right. If moral claims like "right to life" and moral commands like "love your neighbor" are not obscene lies to be damned by the Almighty, then any mandate to promote general welfare must include the moral obligation and command to obey Conscience and do whatever is necessary to alleviate suffering and death using all available tools including government. Thus conservative "philosophical" claims like "healthcare is not a right and so no government involvement" are exposed as truly obscene and irrelevant attempts to excuse the disobeying of Conscience and the turning of the back on all that suffering and death exposed by the vast amount of peer-reviewed epidemiological science published in reputable journals. I cited a small sample of this vast science and other documentation March 11, 12:46 AM, March 11, 9:35 PM, and March 11, 9:36 PM.
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