Health

Op-Ed

U.S. Health Insurance System Stifles Innovation, Hurts Small Business

by Wendell Potter — July 11, 2011 - 8:41am
  • Topics: Corporations, Economy, Health

    • Want to be an entrepreneur but also be certain you'll have health insurance?

    Good luck with that. You might seriously consider moving to Denmark or Canada. Those countries have not only achieved universal health care coverage for their citizens -- coverage that's not tied to employment -- but they have also moved ahead of the U.S. in the Small Business Administration's ranking of entrepreneurial performance worldwide.

    Contrast that with our situation stateside. Many of America's best and brightest are locked in soul-killing corporate jobs because of this country's employer-based health care system. A lot of them undoubtedly would love to make a break from their corporate jails and start their own businesses. But they won't -- especially if there's a family to support -- because they fear losing health care benefits and not being able to find decent coverage on their own.

    Op-Ed

    For-Profit Health Insurance: Where the Real Death Panels Lie

    by Wendell Potter — July 7, 2011 - 11:54am
  • Topics: Corporations, Ethics, Health

    • On behalf of Grigor and Hilda Sarkisyan, I would like to invite Republican Rep. Phil Gingrey of Georgia to attend the 21st birthday celebration of the Sarkisyans' only daughter, Nataline, this coming Saturday, July 9, in Calabasas, California.

    Gingrey could consider it a legitimate, reimbursable fact-finding mission. He clearly needs to have more facts about the U.S. health care system before he starts talking about death panels again.

    Gingrey seems determined to keep alive the lie that the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a., Obamacare) will create government-run death panels in the Medicare program.

    Sarah Palin started the death panel fabrication when she claimed during the health care reform debate that a proposal to allow Medicare to reimburse doctors for talking to their patients about advance directives would be tantamount to establishing death panels deep in the federal bureaucracy. So many people believed her lie that Democrats felt they had no choice but to strip that provision from the final bill.

    News

    Thousands Ask Norman Lear’s Environmental Media Association To Cut Ties With Sewage Sludge Company

    by Jill Richardson — July 7, 2011 - 11:10am
  • Topics: Food Safety, Health

    • The Food Rights Network asked people to join in calling on the Environmental Media Association (EMA) to stop greenwashing sewage sludge, and Joan Dye Gussow, best-selling author of This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader, signed her name.

    Op-Ed

    Time for Outrage

    by Wendell Potter — July 5, 2011 - 11:15am
  • Topics: Corporations, Ethics, Health

    • One of my favorite bumper stickers reads, "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention."

    That's sort of how I feel about the health care debate. If more Americans paid attention to the fate of neighbors and loved ones who have fallen victim to the cruel dysfunction of our health care system, they would see through the onslaught of lies and propaganda perpetrated by special interests profiting from the status quo.

    Since I started speaking out against the abuses of the insurance industry, I have heard from hundreds of people with maddening and heartbreaking stories about being mistreated and victimized by the greed that characterizes so much of the profit-driven American health care system.

    News

    Insurers' Bait and Switch

    by Wendell Potter — June 30, 2011 - 10:35am
  • Topics: Corporations, Ethics, Health

    • More and more Americans are falling victim to one of the most insidious bait-and-switch schemes in U.S. history. As they do, health insurance executives and company shareholders are getting richer and richer. This industry-wide plot explains how health insurers have been able to reap record profits during the recent recession as the ranks of the uninsured and underinsured continue to swell.

    It also explains why the insurance industry and its allies are pulling out all the stops to kill a measure in the California legislature that could protect state residents from losing their homes and being forced into bankruptcy if they get seriously sick or injured.

    On June 2, the California Assembly passed AB 52, a bill that would give state regulators the authority to reject excessive health insurance rate increases. Similar legislation has been introduced in other state legislatures, but nowhere are the stakes higher than in California -- not only because AB 52 would allow the insurance commissioner to turn down requests for unjustifiably high rate hikes, but also because it would enable the commissioner to reject increases in deductibles as well.

    Op-Ed

    Insurers Spend Big Fighting Regulations, Paying CEOs Huge Salaries

    by Wendell Potter — June 28, 2011 - 11:48am
  • Topics: Corporations, Ethics, Health

    • Nowhere are health insurers working harder to thwart reforms that could save consumers billions of dollars than in California. One measure they are especially determined to kill is a bill that would give state regulators the authority to reject rate increases that are excessive or discriminatory.

    The California Assembly passed a bill to do just that earlier this month over the intense opposition of insurers, including the state's biggest supposedly nonprofit health plans: Blue Shield of California and Kaiser Permanente.

    FDA Orders New, Straightforward Cigarette Warning Labels

    by Anne Landman — June 21, 2011 - 1:12pm

    Starting September, 2012, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will require new, updated health warnings on cigarettes. The 25 year-old, plain-text Surgeon General warnings will be out, replaced with updated, straightforward messages like "WARNING: Tobacco smoke causes fatal lung disease in nonsmokers," "WARNING: Cigarettes are addictive" and "WARNING: Cigarettes cause fatal lung disease." The text will be much larger than the old Surgeon General's warnings, and will be accompanied by powerful pictures, like photos of corpses, diseased lungs and oral cancer. To choose the warnings, FDA reviewed relevant scientific literature, considered over 1,700 public comments and performed a survey of 18,000 citizens. The new warnings will be rotated to keep them fresh. They will cover the top 50 percent of the front and rear panels of cigarette packs, and in cigarette ads, the warnings must occupy at least 20 percent of the upper portion of each ad. The new warnings were authorized by the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act that President Obama signed in 2009.

    Main Source: 
    U.S. Food and Drug Administration, June 21, 2011
    Editorial

    Employment-Based Health Insurance Fails America

    by Wendell Potter — June 21, 2011 - 12:22pm
  • Topics: Corporations, Ethics, Health

    • If you haven't gotten much of a raise lately, it's probably because the extra money that might have been put in your paycheck instead went to your health insurer if you are enrolled in an employer-sponsored plan.

    Many Americans haven't seen a pay increase of any kind because their employers can't both increase their wages and continue offering decent health care coverage. It has become an either-or for people like Zeke Zalaski, a factory worker in Bristol, Connecticut, who hasn't had a raise in years.

    Video Highlights Casino Workers' Health Plight

    by Anne Landman — June 17, 2011 - 1:21pm

    Roswell Park Cancer Institute and the public health advocacy group Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights have posted a YouTube video about the plight of casino workers, some of the last employees in the country forced to breathe secondhand cigarette smoke at work. The powerful eight-minute video shows non-smoking casino workers who are ill and dying from prolonged on-the-job exposure to secondhand smoke. An attractive, young non-smoking former casino dealer with an obvious scar on her neck, Sheryl Wilkens, in a hoarse voice describes how she stuck with her job to pay bills while she raised her family. She tearfully tells how in 2006 she developed a lump on her neck, and a subsequent biopsy revealed she had cancer, even though she never smoked. Another worker, a former marathon runner, describes the decline in her health, and how she is now permanently on medication for a number of respiratory diseases caused by her chronic smoke exposure at work. Workers in the multi-billion-dollar gambling industry suffer the highest occupational exposure to secondhand smoke of any workers in the country, and have consistently been left behind as the rest of the country has gone smoke-free as the gambling industry fights to preserve smoking in casinos.

    Main Source: 
    Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights, June 17, 2011
    Editorial

    The Decline of Employer-Based Health Insurance

    by Wendell Potter — June 17, 2011 - 11:43am
  • Topics: Corporations, Ethics, Health

    • The global consulting firm McKinsey & Company set off a firestorm when it released a report last week suggesting that 30 percent of U.S. businesses will stop offering health care benefits to their employees after most of the provisions of the Affordable Care Act go into effect in 2014.

    The White House was quick to challenge the validity of the report, noting that McKinsey has so far refused to provide any details of the methodology used to reach its conclusion. All McKinsey will say is that its report was based on a survey of 1,300 employers and "other proprietary research."

    White House deputy chief of staff Nancy-Ann DeParle, who previously headed the president's office of health care reform, called it an "outlier" and cited other studies predicting that few if any employers would drop coverage because of the Affordable Health Care Act.

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