Health Care For America Now

Because of insurance company greed and denial of care, Stacie Ritter lost everything. Here's her story:

Health reform is at the finish line. Stacie and her family are just a few of the reasons we need health care reform and we need to finish it right. We'll be posting one story every hour for twenty-four hours today to make sure we finish health reform right.

If you haven't joined our campaign to finish health care reform right yet, please join us and send a letter to Congress and the President, demanding they make health care affordable for everyone and hold the insurance companies accountable before a final bill is sent to the Oval Office for a signature.

Click here to join our campaign to Finish Reform Right.

Dan Sherry, small business owner and Main Street Alliance member, on getting reform right:

Health reform is at the finish line. Dan and his business are just two of the reasons we need health care reform and we need to finish it right. We'll be posting one story every hour for twenty-four hours today to make sure we finish health reform right.

If you haven't joined our campaign to finish health care reform right yet, please join us and send a letter to Congress and the President, demanding they make health care affordable for everyone and hold the insurance companies accountable before a final bill is sent to the Oval Office for a signature.

Click here to join our campaign to Finish Reform Right.

CWA member Valeria Castle-Stanley explains how the proposed Health Care Tax would affect her:

Health reform is at the finish line. Valeria and her family are just a few of the reasons we need health care reform and we need to finish it right. We'll be posting one story every hour for twenty-four hours today to make sure we finish health reform right.

If you haven't joined our campaign to finish health care reform right yet, please join us and send a letter to Congress and the President, demanding they make health care affordable for everyone and hold the insurance companies accountable before a final bill is sent to the Oval Office for a signature.

Click here to join our campaign to Finish Reform Right.

Georgeanne's story:

In 2003, William Koehler of Pittsburgh, Pa. lost his job as an electronics technician. He lost his health insurance, too, but he'd been lucky enough to have the defibrillator battery in his heart changed just the previous year. No insurer would cover him except for one company which refused to cover anything related to his arrhythmia, says his sister.

He survived as long as his battery did, dying on March 7, 2009 at 57. His sister, Georgeanne Koehler, has become an activist, telling the story about how her brother died to anyone who will listen. On Thursday, she traveled to Washington, D.C. from Pittsburgh to join a protest outside a conference for America's Health Insurance Plans, a lobbying group for the insurance industry.

Read more…

Georgeanne started a postcard-writing campaign to Congress over the holidays, delivering hundreds of postcards in support of real reform to Congress.

Health reform is at the finish line. Georgeanne and her brother are just two of the reasons we need health care reform and we need to finish it right. We'll be posting one story every hour for twenty-four hours today to make sure we finish health reform right.

If you haven't joined our campaign to finish health care reform right yet, please join us and send a letter to Congress and the President, demanding they make health care affordable for everyone and hold the insurance companies accountable before a final bill is sent to the Oval Office for a signature.

Click here to join our campaign to Finish Reform Right.

There are numerous policy reasons why we need to finish health reform right before a bill gets to President Obama's desk for his signature. And they are important policies, policies worth fighting for. Why? Because getting health reform right is about people.

Over the next 24 hours, we're going to post one story every hour from someone who needs health reform - and needs it done right. Some of the stories are from people we've worked with over the 18-month life of this campaign. Some are from our coalition partners. Some are people who've told their stories to the media. What they have in common is they need health reform and need it done right, and that means making health care affordable for everyone and holding the insurance companies accountable.

What needs to be done for affordability? In short, make health care affordable for everyone with better subsidies; don't tax benefits; and ask employers to pitch in their fair share. (More details can be found here.) And what needs to be done to really hold the insurance companies accountable? Create a national public health insurance option and give us strong regulations like national exchanges, national standard benefits, and regulatory enforcement. (More details here.)

The first story will come at 9:00 am EST on January 5th. Tune in then to learn more about the people behind health reform. Until then, join us and send a letter to Congress and the President, demanding they make health care affordable for everyone and hold the insurance companies accountable before a final bill is sent to the Oval Office for a signature.

Click here to join our campaign to Finish Reform Right.

Our health care system is broken, nobody disputes that, and yet even in our broken system, people like me have it much better. Why? Because I'm a man.

Women are charged more for insurance. They can be denied coverage if they're been a victim of domestic violence, or if they've had a C-Section. Many insurance plans don't cover the full range of care they need. Maternity care, in particular, is hard to find. And women statistically end up spending more of their money out-of-pocket on health care, and thus are more likely than men to be uninsured.

The abuses women suffer at the hands of our health care system can be staggering:

Today a woman testified before the Senate because she was denied health insurance as a result of a c-section — unless she wanted to permanently sterilize herself:

Today, at Sen. Mikulski's HELP Committee hearing "What Women Want: Equal Benefits for Equal Premiums," we met Peggy Robertson. Peggy is a mother of two young boys, living in Colorado with her husband. Over the past few years, Peggy and her family have faced not one but two shocking cases of insurance company abuse. First, in 2007, Peggy was denied coverage by Golden Rule insurance, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group (the largest insurance company in the US), because of a previous c-section birth. What happened next is shocking (Sen. Mikulski called it "bone-chilling" and "morally repugnant"): Golden Rule said they would cover Peggy if she agreed to be sterilized. Watch the video of her story on the SEIU Blog.

One of Health Care for America Now's principles for reform is equity in health care, and that means these disparities have to end.

That's why we're joining with our coalition partner, the National Women's Law Center, to speak out today about this issue. They've put together a phenomenal site where you can contact Congress and make sure women are treated equally by our health care system, along with an excellent widget to take action:

The House bill that will be voted on shortly gives women equality in health care. So does the Senate bill. But its imperative your representatives in Washington know this issue is important to you, no matter if you're a man or a woman. It's a simple matter of equality.

It's never a time for celebration when another American can't find health insurance because of private insurers and their denials. Indeed, the practice of denying insurance to people with pre-existing conditions is so common, the media hardly ever talks about individual cases and instead mention the staggering statistics.

One case, however, is worth mentioning today. Dougals Holtz-Eakin, one of John McCain's top policy gurus and an architect of John McCain's laughable health care plan, is about to run out the clock on his COBRA benefits. In a few weeks, he'll be uninsured and shopping for coverage on the individual market, a situation faced by millions of Americans who have lost their job in the last year. And, like millions of his fellow middle-aged Americans, Holtz-Eakin has a pre-existing condition:

Holtz-Eakin, who is about to start shopping for insurance on the individual market, is 51. And he has one of those pesky "preexisting conditions" that insurance companies often cite in denying coverage.

"A right renal autotransplant," he said, pointing to his abdomen as he described the 1990 transplant surgery he went through after one of his kidneys was damaged in an accident. "They got rid of the artery, moved my kidney and rebuilt me for the 21st century. If you look at my file, any insurance company would go, 'Hmm . . .' "

Good luck.

As President Obama has said, it can happen to any of us, even those of us who champion a health care plan that would have done nothing for people with pre-existing conditions.

Perhaps, in light of his current plight, Holtz-Eakin is reconsidering his stance on health reform? Nope:

Despite his personal trials, however, Holtz-Eakin said his conviction on the hot-button issue of health care is unchanged. He believes that reform is needed, but that President Obama and congressional Democrats are going about it the wrong way. The system is "broken," he said, but the bills now before Congress do not cut costs enough. On the campaign trail, Holtz-Eakin promoted McCain's plan to eliminate the tax exemption for employer-sponsored health insurance and give tax credits to individuals to buy their own coverage.

When health reform passes, Holtz-Eakin will be able to get insurance. And it won't cost $1000 per month, as Holtz-Eakin's COBRA payments do - something only the rich in society, like Holtz-Eakin, can afford. Maybe then he'll be thankful.

You remember Ian Pearl, right? He's the guy who's insurer called him a dog and then threatened to cancel his policy in the entire state to avoid giving him and people like him the benefits they paid for.

As Ian himself explains:

After decades of medical emergencies, we still weren't prepared for the latest crisis — this one created by the same insurance company that once saved my life. Guardian abruptly withdrew our health plan from all policyholders in New York where my father's business is based. Guardian offered a 'replacement' plan with low benefits and no home nursing benefits. They knew that I would never survive with such a plan, but they didn't care.

Suspecting that this action was related to the high cost of my care, we filed a lawsuit and have asked the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to enforce existing federal laws and require Guardian to continue my health plan. Without federal intervention, I will lose this insurance, and that would be a death sentence.

Our lawsuit uncovered insurance company documents that confirmed my suspicion that I'm a target of discrimination. 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. Laws prohibited the cancellation of the individual members with serious chronic health problems, so Guardian opted to cancel the plan for all members of this specific health plan in New York, an action that violates federal law.

Ian's mother Susan came to Washington, DC to confront lobbyists Karen Ignagni and the rest of the insurance industry last week. And after an extremely well-attended press conference and a march involving 600+ people, Ian's insurer, Guardian, relented:

The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America today notified the family of Ian Pearl that the company intends to ensure that Mr. Pearl will continue to have the same benefits that Guardian currently provides including 24/7 in-home nursing care. While details are not yet final, our commitment to continuing uninterrupted care to Ian Pearl is absolute.

Needless to say, the Pearl family is ecstatic.

It's unfortunate, however, that a media frenzy and a huge protest were needed to get Ian the care he paid for, deserved, and needed to live. Ian's case serves as an example of the lengths the insurance industry will go to deny care and make a profit.

The case serves as a testament to why we need health reform with a public health insurance option. Without it, there will be no way to hold the insurance industry accountable for their customers who can't travel to DC to confront the industry and who don't have 600+ people backing them up on the street outside. Everyone in America deserves quality, affordable health care, and everyone deserves a choice of public or private insurance.

If you want to know why the insurance companies are enemy #1 when it comes to health reform, read this:

Christina Turner feared that she might have been sexually assaulted after two men slipped her a knockout drug. She thought she was taking proper precautions when her doctor prescribed a month's worth of anti-AIDS medicine.

Only later did she learn that she had made herself all but uninsurable.

Turner had let the men buy her drinks at a bar in Fort Lauderdale. The next thing she knew, she said, she was lying on a roadside with cuts and bruises that indicated she had been raped. She never developed an HIV infection. But months later, when she lost her health insurance and sought new coverage, she ran into a problem.

Turner, 45, who used to be a health insurance underwriter herself, said the insurance companies examined her health records. Even after she explained the assault, the insurers would not sell her a policy because the HIV medication raised too many health questions. They told her they might reconsider in three or more years if she could prove that she was still AIDS-free.

In the insurance company world of greed and money, rape is a pre-existing condition. Shouldn't that be criminal?

This is why we're marching on the insurance companies tomorrow.

These companies need to be taken down a notch. They need their anti-trust exemption revoked, and they need competition from a public health insurance option, so people like Christina will at least have somewhere to go when a heartless bureaucrat denies them the medicine they needs to keep them healthy after their rape.

When it comes to health care, women really feel the pain. According the National Womens' Law Center, women are denied fair health care every day:

Being a woman is not a pre-existing condition.

But, as NWLC uncovered in our groundbreaking report, women are regularly denied coverage for "pre-existing conditions" including pregnancy, a previous C-Section or past domestic abuse. Insurance companies charge women as much as 48% more for individual health care coverage than men. And it is expensive, difficult and in some states impossible for women to find coverage for maternity care when purchasing their own health insurance plan.

The depths to which insurance companies will sink to deny women health care are almost unfathomable. Today a woman testified before the Senate because she was denied health insurance as a result of a c-section — unless she wanted to permanently sterilize herself:

Today, at Sen. Mikulski's HELP Committee hearing "What Women Want: Equal Benefits for Equal Premiums," we met Peggy Robertson. Peggy is a mother of two young boys, living in Colorado with her husband. Over the past few years, Peggy and her family have faced not one but two shocking cases of insurance company abuse. First, in 2007, Peggy was denied coverage by Golden Rule insurance, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group (the largest insurance company in the US), because of a previous c-section birth. What happened next is shocking (Sen. Mikulski called it "bone-chilling" and "morally repugnant"): Golden Rule said they would cover Peggy if she agreed to be sterilized. Watch the video of her story on the SEIU Blog.

It's time to end these outrageous practices once and for all. I am sick of it. For a clearinghouse of all things health care and women go to "Women and Health Care Reform" and take action today.