Health Care for America Now sent a bunch of staff members out to Denver for this week's Democratic National Convention. They'll be walking around, meeting folks, and spreading the message that health care needs to be the top issue in 2009. So, if you see folks wearing Health Care for America Now buttons, stop and say hi!

Richard Kirsch, our National Campaign Director, is in Denver as well, addressing various groups of folks throught the convention. Today, he addressed the Seachange Ideas Forum. You can take a look at the video here.

Watching the convention yesterday from the office here in D.C. (the online team got to stay at home and mind the tubes), Levana and I were struck by something pretty signifigant: In every major speech, health care was featured prominantly. Here's a sampling:

Nancy Pelosi:

On health care for 10 million American children and on protecting Medicare—a bill so crucial that Senator Ted Kennedy left his own medical treatment to cast the decisive vote—Barack Obama is right and John McCain is wrong.

Caroline Kennedy:

If your children are receiving health care thanks to the Children's Health Insurance Program, if you see a nurse at a community health center or if you're benefiting from the Medicare program that he fought to create, and that just last month he returned to the Senate to save, Teddy is your senator too.

Michelle Obama:

It’s what he’s done in the United States Senate, fighting to ensure the men and women who serve this country are welcomed home not just with medals and parades, but with good jobs and benefits and health care - including mental health care.

That’s why he’s running - to end the war in Iraq responsibly, to build an economy that lifts every family, to make health care available for every American, and to make sure every child in this nation gets a world class education all the way from preschool to college.

We're glad that health care is at the top of the agenda in Denver. We think it should be at the top of everyone's agenda, no matter which party you're part of. We're looking forward to seeing if health care is at the top of the agenda next week at the Republican National Convention.

NEWS

Stanford to Limit Drug Maker Financing - New York Times

Stanford University, concerned about the influence drug companies may have on medical education, is expected to announce Tuesday that it will severely restrict industry financing of doctors’ continuing education at its medical school.

In just under three hours, Health Care for America Now members submitted over 1,000 questions and comments for America's Health Insurance Plans to respond to. I attended the live chat event and took a video afterward with most of the questions (I missed the first few due to connection issues). Judging by the questions Karen Ignagni answered, the fact that only 45 minutes were allotted for questions, and the lack of followups, it's unlikely the public's concerns were really represented.

Here is a video of the chat:

To recap:

• This event was entirely online, with questions submitted by email beforehand or screened by a moderator during the chat. Either way, there was a heavy dose of screening involved, and no followups.
• The event lasted for only 45 minutes, hardly enough time to discuss such an important issue. And Karen Ignagni's responses came extremely slowly. Maybe she was vetting everything she said with her corporate overlords before she typed it. At least that's what it looked like from the spin.
• The questions that were selected allowed AHIP to spin their answers to look like they were for a solution.

As soon as we're done compiling the questions you all submitted, we'll make them public and show you what the health insurance industry declined to answer. From a quick perusal of the questions, you folks asked some *excellent* things. Not surprisingly, they weren't chosen as part of AHIP's "listening tour."

Oh, and the next stop on their listening tour is this Wednesday in Salt Lake City, Utah. Not surprisingly, there is no word yet on a location or time.

Come on, AHIP. Publish the dates, times, and locations of these events so the public can speak it's mind. Otherwise, you're not really listening.

NEWS

Health Care Reform Advocates Meet with Senator Harkin - Health Care for Health Care Workers

On August 16, Senator Tom Harkin met with the members of the Health Care for America Now (HCAN) Coalition. In the photo at right, Di Findley, Director of the Iowa CareGivers Association- HCHCW’s Iowa partner organization, is pictured with other members of the Coalition as Senator Harkin signs the HCAN’s “Which Side” Pledge form.

Today, we're asking folks to submit questions to the insurance industry for their online "listening forum," but we're keeping a copy of the questions for ourselves to make sure we have a public record of all the tough questions that were asked but the industry didn't decide to answer.

We just sent this email to our full list:

Dear Jason Rosenbaum:

The insurance industry, represented by America's Health Insurance Plans, is on a "listening tour." You can give them a piece of your mind by clicking the link below:

http://healthcareforamericanow.org/ahip

As we've noted before, this tour is a smokescreen, designed to fool the American people into thinking the insurance industry is taking the health care crisis seriously, when in reality they are working to preserve our broken system. The fact that the stops on this tour have been announced with sometimes as little as 24-hours notice, and have been held in undisclosed locations, underlines the fact that this tour isn't really about "listening" to the public.

Today at 12:30 pm central time, the insurance industry says they will be answering the public's questions online. While we fully expect them to screen out the questions they don't want to answer, we're asking you to submit a question or comment anyway. The catch? We're collecting a copy of the responses so we have a truly public record of what the insurance industry was asked, but didn't answer.

So, can you submit a question or comment to the insurance industry? Click below to submit a question, and don't worry if you don't know what to ask, we've got a few sample questions waiting for you. Click here:

http://healthcareforamericanow.org/ahip

Thanks for your help. We need all the support we can get to expose the insurance industry's fraud!

Cheers,

Levana
Health Care for America Now

Can you help us spread the word about this?

Saratoga Springs: These trends suggest that financial gains for insurers do not translate into improved access to care of financial protection for individuals.

Read more…

Sometimes, the numbers just say it all. Last year, our issue brief Women and Health Coverage: The Affordability Gap reported some distressing numbers about women’s struggle to get affordable health care (we found, for instance, that over a third of all women had medical debt problems). New survey data published in two reports from the Commonwealth Fund shows just how bad things are. If anything speaks to the need for health reform that will guarantee quality affordable health coverage for everyone, it is numbers like these (with style credits to the ever-fascinating Harper’s Index):

1. 2 in 3: The proportion of adults who were uninsured or underinsured, reported problems paying medical bills, or went without needed care because of cost in 2007.
2. 79 million: Number of American adults with medical debt or bill problems
3. Percentage of insured versus uninsured women over 50 who received a mammogram in the past 2 years, respectively: 81, 45

Read the rest of this post…

The health insurance industry, represented by America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), is on a "listening tour" to convince America they aren't really putting profits before people and practicing murder by spreadsheet.

At the last stop on their "listening tour," no advance notice was given, proving that they are not really interested in listening. This time, the health insurance industry gave the public a weekend's notice to get to their "listening tour," further proof that they're not really listening. And their tour this time is totally online, allowing them to pick and choose questions they answer.

The email they sent out today at 12:39 pm is:

Next Stop: Denver, CO

Join us for a health care solutions chat live from the Democratic National Convention.

The Campaign for An American Solution comes to Denver for the Democratic National Convention and invites you to participate in an online forum with Karen Ignagni, President and CEO of America's Health Insurance Plans. We will be answering as many of your questions as we can about health care in America and how we can work together to fix it.

We invite you to visit our website and submit your health care questions during our online forum. We will take all of your questions and do our best to answer as many as we can in the allotted time.

Date: Monday, August 25th, 2008
Time: 12:30-1:15pm MST (11:30am PST and 2:30pm EST)
Place: www.americanhealthsolution.org

We challenge AHIP the health insurance industry to stop playing games with the American people. If they actually want to hear about the health care crisis in America, they should give regular folks advance notice of their events and to do them in person, in public. AHIP should publish the rest of the dates, times, and locations on their "Campaign for an American Solution Listening Tour."

To do anything less is to admit the insurance industry isn't interested in listening to dissenting views, even if those views come from the American public.

(And if you're in Denver, head down to the event if you can and give the industry a piece of your mind!)

NEWS

Rally calls for national health care - The Saratogian

Members of Health Care for American Now! (HCAN), an advocacy group representing a wide array of interests, rallied outside the Saratoga Hospital's Emergency Room to release the report to the media and to call for a national health care system.

NEWS

Workers' Insurance Costs Soar - The Tribune

Health insurance premium costs for private-sector employees skyrocketed more than 100 percent from 1996 through 2006, according to new statistics from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.