Stop the Insurance Lobbyists - Finish Reform Right.!

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In Washington, hundreds of people protested outside the Chamber of Commerce to send a message that we can't let corporate lobbyists win - we must finish health care reform right and we must finish it now.

Watch:

We need to hold events like this all over the country if we're going to get the job done. We'll be mobilizing across the country in the coming weeks, and we want to know if you can join us.

More details are coming soon, but we need to start organizing now!

Public Option Annie - with lyrics (guerrilla musical at AHIP conference)

I love this, you've got to give credit to Billionaires for Wealthcare for their innovative and creative protest...

AHIP is the powerful insurance lobby that spends 5 million dollars a week trying to kill health care reform. Billionaires for Wealthcare is a grassroots network looking to stop them - with song.

• AHIP and other insurance and HMO interests spend nearly $5 million per week undermining real health care reform, including a public option.

• AHIP has resorted to out-right lying and scare tactics to block health care reform. They sent letters that lie to seniors about what health care reform means for Medicare, and they issued a report on the costs of health care reform legislation that is so misleading even the reports embarrassed authors distanced themselves from the way AHIP used their work.

• Every year, 45,000 people die because they cant get access to the health care they need. Yet AHIP continues to stand in the way of health care reform that would provide coverage to millions of Americans because the industry is more concerned with protecting profits than saving lives.

Lyrics to "Public Option Annie"

(to the tune of "Tomorrow" from Annie)

SINGER #1

No, thank you!

FOR KILLING THE PUBLIC OPTION

AND BLOCKING ANY HOPES OF ITS ADOPTION

THANK YOU, SIR!

SINGER #2
Sure,

BUT WHAT ABOUT COMPETITION?

IT'S AN OLD AMERICAN TRADITION

OR SO I'VE HEARD?

SINGER #1
Meh.

SINGER #3

WHEN OLYMPIA SNOWE

SAID NO,

IT CROAKED

Right?

SINGER #2

NO, THE OPTION'S NOT DEAD

SINGER #3

OR RED!

SINGER #1

EXPLAIN!

Who let these hippies in here?

SINGERS #2 AND #3, and CHORUS MEMBERS

IF WE GET A PUB-

LIC OPTION

WE CAN SNIFF OUT WASTE

JUST LIKE A DACHSUND

COSTS COME DOWN!

SINGER #1

Hey, those "costs" are my profits!

SINGERS #2 AND #3, and CHORUS MEMBERS

THE OPTION

THE OPTION

THE PUBLIC WANTS OPTIONS

WITHOUT IT,

IT'S A GIVEAWAY

SINGER #1

Exactly. To us. Am I in the right room?

THE OPTION

THE OPTION

THE PUBLIC WANTS AN OPTION

SINGERS #2 AND #3, and CHORUS MEMBERS

OR REFORM IS A CORP'RATE GIVE-A-WAY!

SINGER #1

Well, I've heard enough - my helicopter is parked in a handicap space.

http://www.billionairesforwealthcare....

Watch Sicko - A Michael Moore Documentary on Healthcare...

Click here to Watch Sicko...

A must watch film to understand the health-care reform debate..

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Sicko is a documentary film by Michael Moore. The film investigates the American health care system in 2007, focusing on its health insurance and pharmaceutical industry. The film compares the for-profit, non-universal U.S. system with the non-profit universal health care systems of Canada, the United Kingdom, France and Cuba.

According to the movie Sicko, almost fifty million Americans are uninsured and those who are covered with insurance are often victims of insurance company fraud and red tape. Interviews are conducted with people who thought they had adequate coverage but were denied care, as well as former employees of insurance companies who describe cost-cutting initiatives that encourage bonuses for insurance company physicians to deny medical treatments for policy holders.

In this documentary, the director / writer Michael Moore exposes the dysfunctional North American health care system, oriented to huge profits and not for their mission of saving lives. Further, Moore shows the corruption in the political system, with members of government and congress “bought” by the corporations and the situation of the average American citizens.

Watch Sicko online...

Rep Anthony Weiner (D-NY 9th) Silences Joe Scarborough on Healthcare Reform - Medicare for All...

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

SF Chronicle: 'Sicko' a Pain in the Neck for Healthcare Industry / Uncomfortable Attention on Insurers, Drug Companies

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by Victoria Colliver, Chronicle Staff Writer

Saturday, June 30, 2007
Filmmaker Michael Moore (left) in a scene from his movie,...

In "Sicko," his new film assailing the U.S. health care system, filmmaker Michael Moore doesn't try to be fair to health insurers and pharmaceutical companies.

That's because Moore -- the man behind anti-Bush "Fahrenheit 9/11" and pro-gun control "Bowling for Columbine" -- makes no pretense of balance. He has a point of view: Greedy pharmaceutical companies need to be much more tightly regulated. And health insurers? They shouldn't exist at all, replaced instead by government-subsidized health care.

It's safe to say the health care industry looked forward to the film's opening Friday about as much as they would to open-heart surgery.

All the same, industry representatives tried to downplay the potential impact and insisted the film was causing them nothing more than a mild case of angina.

"Unfortunately, this is a Hollywood editorial. It is not a documentary and it should be seen as such," said Mohit Ghose, spokesman for America's Health Insurance Plans, the industry trade group. "He (Moore) made no attempt to contact us ... about the issues he raises in the movie."

Ghose said he has no plans to see the film. But many insurance insiders admit to having already seen the film in previews, clips or in a bootlegged copy that appeared briefly on the Internet almost two weeks ago.

Moore builds his case against managed care through a series of anecdotes: a woman whose health insurer denied treatment on the basis she was "too young" to have cervical cancer; another who was billed for an ambulance ride after a car accident because she failed to get the trip "pre-approved."

Some cases are heart-wrenching, such as a Kansas City man who died from kidney cancer after his insurer deemed his treatment options "experimental."

Focus on talking points

As part of its damage-control strategy, insurance industry executives talked among themselves and agreed to focus on a few "talking points." They say they encourage debate about health care reform and support initiatives to reduce the number of uninsured Americans.

Insurers decided it was not in their interest to enter a public battle of wits with Moore, whose "Fahrenheit 9/11" was the top-grossing documentary of all time.

"We all agreed that taking the high road as opposed to taking on Michael Moore is what we wanted to do," said Matthew Schiffgens, spokesman for Kaiser Permanente.

Shannon Troughton, spokeswoman for WellPoint Inc., the parent company of Blue Cross of California, said there was no "strategy on our part to handle this in any specific way."

"There's a difference between the movie, which is more of a one-sided piece of entertainment, versus what really needs to happen, which is a dialog and conversation at all levels about health reform," she said.

Kaiser's rebuttal

Still, many companies have taken it on themselves to clarify the ways they believe they've been misrepresented in the film.

Kaiser, headquartered in Oakland, posted a rebuttal on its Web site to the way it was portrayed in specific portions of the film.

The HMO features prominently in a 1993 case involving 18-month-old Mychelle Williams. The little girl died from a blood infection shortly after being transferred to a Kaiser hospital from Martin Luther King Jr. /Drew Medical Center in Los Angeles.

While the film contends she died because Kaiser refused to authorize tests that would have determined her condition, Kaiser said it was a case of medical malpractice, not denial of treatment. The jury found both doctors involved to be liable, with King/Drew responsible for 75 percent of the more than $1.35 million in damages and Kaiser for 25 percent.

Kaiser also took issue with the film's portrayal of a conversation between Richard Nixon and John Ehrlichman, in which the former president's top domestic adviser urged him to set rules authorizing the health maintenance organization structure. He cited Kaiser as an example, arguing that its model of medicine provided less care and therefore made more money.

"Ehrlichman's distorted paraphrase badly misrepresents Kaiser Permanente, its goals, its strategy and its not-for-profit model," Kaiser's Web site states.

As for a segment in which Kaiser is accused of dumping an indigent patient near a Los Angeles shelter, Kaiser admitted to handling the transfer "very badly" but called it an isolated incident. Kaiser said it has changed its practices to prevent the inappropriate discharge of homeless patients.

Blue Shield of California, based in San Francisco, said Moore did not tell the full story in the case of Maria Watanabe, a woman who explained in the film she was denied an MRI and finally received one in Japan, where she discovered she had a brain tumor. The filmmaker ends her story by saying she hired a lawyer.

"Blue Shield was completely unaware of the women's medical condition until we were sued, and we prevailed in a jury trial. The filmmaker was aware of the trial and undoubtedly knew the outcome," Blue Shield spokesman Tom Epstein said.

Blue Cross of California declined to discuss the case of a woman whose policy was retroactively canceled for failing to disclose she had a yeast infection. The company said the case was "favorably settled by both parties."

A pharmaceutical-makers' trade group fired off an early counterattack with a press statement in May accusing Moore of producing a "biased, one-sided attack." The industry, which plays a smaller role in the film than it apparently expected, has laid low in recent weeks.

Enough said

For his part, Moore has said he didn't try to hunt down industry executives as he famously did with General Motors in "Roger & Me." Industry -- pharmaceuticals in particular -- already has had more than enough say, he argued.

"The nightly news seems like every other ad is a pharmaceutical ad. Their story is told over and over again every single day. This is an attempt for two hours during the whole year -- two hours, the length of this film, to say here's the other side," he told the Seattle Times.

E-mail Victoria Colliver at vcolliver@sfchronicle.com.

Universal Access to Healthcare - The Time is Now..!

I feel that the time has come that we as a nation must make a dedicated commitment to making affordable health insurance coverage available to all Americans. And, that Universal coverage should mean access to health-care for everyone, period!

It should be a national goal for all Americans
to be covered by an adequate health insurance plan, considering that presently 46 million Americans lack health insurance and 16 million more have inadequate insurance to meet their health needs. The lack of health insurance causes roughly 18,000 unnecessary deaths every year in the United States, according to the Institute of Medicine.

This lack of adequate insurance also prevents many patients from obtaining the care they need in a timely fashion, from getting the tests required for diagnosing numerous illnesses, including cancer, and from taking their physician-prescribed medications for treating chronic illnesses such as diabetes and asthma and from obtaining preventive care.

Universal coverage means there are no fillet-mignon plans for the wealthy and chopped liver plans for everyone else, with high deductibles, limited services, caps on payments for care, and no protection in the event of a catastrophe.

I believe, there should be one level of comprehensive care no matter what the size of your wallet or bank account. Even if you are unemployed or lose or change your job you should still have health coverage.

The goal of Universal coverage should be to remove the financial roadblocks currently encountered by many, myself included. A single payer system would encourage preventive care that lowers an individual’s ultimate costs, the pain and suffering when problems are neglected, and societal costs in the over utilization of emergency rooms or the spread of communicable diseases.

Since everyone would have the same coverage - unlike most private plans which restrict what doctors, caregivers, or hospitals are utilized - you could use the doctors of your choice.

Under a single payer system, patients would have a clear choice and all medical providers would be assured the same fair reimbursement. The present wasteful paperwork and bureaucracy severely compromises physicians’ ability to practice medicine.

It's incredible that our rich nation spends twice the amount per capita on health care as other industrialized nations which provide comprehensive coverage to all their citizens, yet we have the second worst newborn mortality rate in the developed world.

In our system nearly one-third (31 percent) of health spending is consumed by unnecessary, wasteful administrative bureaucracy - such as denying patient care, advertising budgets and outrageous profits - compared to about 3% under Medicare.

The tremendous cost savings under a single payer system would produce the necessary savings needed to cover everyone, largely by using existing resources without the waste.

Taiwan, shifting from a U.S. Health-care model, adopted a single-payer system in 1995, boosting health coverage from 57% to 97% of it's citizens with little, if any increase in overall health care spending.

Fair reimbursements applied equally to all providers would be set by a public system, while assuring all comprehensive and appropriate health care is delivered. It could also use its clout to negotiate volume discounts for prescription drugs and medical equipment.

The public would set the policies and administer the system, not high priced CEOs meeting in secret and making decisions based on what inflates their own golden parachutes, compensation packages, stock wealth or their company's outlandish bottom lines.

I think it's clear that a Universal plan cannot suceed in a system dominated by private, greedy, profit-motivated insurance companies. A single payer plan would put an end to the insurance industry's undue influence on national health policy and stop their lobbyists interference with patient care.

Caregivers and patients would regain the autonomy to make decisions on what’s best for a patient’s health, not what’s dictated by the billing department or some bean counter.

Denials of coverage due to pre-existing conditions or cancellation of policies for “unreported” minor health problems would be a thing of the past.

A Harvard Business School study has shown that illness and medical bills contribute to 50 percent of all U.S. bankruptcies, affecting more than 2 million Americans annually. Most Americans with coverage have skimpy insurance policies that are inadequate to protect against financial ruin: 75 percent of those bankrupted by medical bills were insured at the onset of their bankrupting illness.

Who would have guessed forty-two years ago, on July 30, 1965, when Congress passed the first Medicare bill -- despite numerous warnings about the ‘dangers of socialized medicine and opposition by the AMA -- that Medicare would become one of the most popular and successful Federal programs ensuring access to health-care and dignity for this country’s senior citizens?

I strongly support Universal access to comprehensive, affordable, high-quality health care through a single-payer financing mechanism for everyone in New York and ultimately, the nation.

I ask that you speak out and tell your legislators that this is the time for Universal access to health coverage - it's a right that all Americans deserve, despite their financial wherewithal or social standing.