CONNECTICUT

Below is a photo from our event in Connecticut organized by HCAN Partner Connecticut Citizen Action Group (CCAG)

FLORIDA

Orlando–Report from HCAN Partner Organize Now

Orlando event targeting Webster had nearly 30 people in attendance from Organize Now, AFSCME, FLARA, FL Chain, JWJ, OFA and more. Fox 35 and Channel 13 both attended the event in front of the local Chamber of Commerce. Speakers included 2 folks who had benefited from health care reform and organizational speakers. At the end of the press conference everyone started calling Webster's office. His office was clearly concerned about the immediate calls and asked folks why they were all calling at once-was it on tv or an email or radio. Calls continued throughout the day.

Tampa-Report from HCAN Partner FCAN

Event coverage here: The Ledger: Residents Ask Ross to Support Health Care

MAINE

Report from HCAN Partner Maine People's Alliance

We had a good turnout in the snow to rally in support of the Affordable Care Act. The “Rally to Save Healthcare” asked our new Governor and Attorney General to stop wasting our time and money by signing on to repeal our care, thanking  Representatives Pingree and Michaud for their support of the ACA, and asking our state legislature to work towards implementation that will cover the most Maine people possible.

Watch video here: Rally to Save health Care

Media Coverage so far:

Maine Health Reform Supporters Rally Against Repeal

Non-profits rally in favor of health care law

AP: Maine rally held to support nat'l health care law

MICHIGAN

Report from Michigan Citizen Action

Around 40 people prayed outside of Congressman Upton's office.  10 personal letters delivered to Ed Sackely, District Director.  Because of new security, letters and people met with Ed one-by-one.  Kalamazoo Gazette article in the link below.  Linda did WMUK interview from 7:33 - 7:40.

Watch video from the event here

Health-care reform supporters hold vigil outside U.S. Rep. Fred Upton's office on eve of House vote

MINNESOTA

Report from HCAN Partner Take Action Minnesota

Our MOC letter attached and we placed the following Op-Ed in the press today, by TakeAction board member. Thank you Liz Doyle

MinnPost- Republicans have it backwards on the jobs effect of health-care reform

NEVADA

Report from HCAN Partner PLAN

The Heckuva Deal Donut Hole bake sale went well. Several volunteers from PLAN, Americans United, and our coalition partners spoke to over 150 senior citizens at the Flamingo Senior Center in Joe Heck’s district (pic attached). Not one senior wanted to buy back their donut hole for $250 but we did give away 6 dozen donut holes along with handouts on ACA repeal targeted to seniors. We also logged 42 calls to Heck’s office made through the cell phones we brought to the event.

Additionally, we sent out action alerts statewide as did several of our coalition partners (Americans United, ProgressNow, and the SEIU) and will continue phone banking and mobilizations today.

The press was only radio phoned-in interview and mention on noon hour news (waiting for clips to become available), with a couple of outlets interested in doing a follow up story after the vote happens.

NORTH DAKOTA

Report from HCAN Partner NDPeople.org

State Capitol news conference challenging new Rep. Rick Berg on the repeal of ACA yesterday. Speakers did great! Media were the two TV stations (NBC and CBS) and North Dakota Public Radio. The reporter, from Forum Communications which has four daily papers and a bunch of TV stations, asked for the news release.

OHIO

Report from HCAN Partner Progress Ohio

Marianne Steger, from AFSCME Ohio Council 8 speaks to Steve Cheek, Staff Assistant, for Congressman Steve Stivers in the lobby of his district office.

Ohio Health Care Coalition Deliver Petitions To Ohio Congressional District Offices

ProgressOhio Community Blog:

By Denise Gastesi on January 19, 2011 9:49

Ohio Consumers Ask Congressmen Stivers To Side With Hard-Working Families, Not Big Insurance Companies

Tuesday, a delegation of leaders from various groups which are part of an Ohio Coalition of Health Care For America Now (HCAN), and constituents which led the national fight to pass the Affordable Care Act (ACA), delivered petitions to Congressman Stivers district office in Columbus to discuss his position on repealing the new law, which protects consumers from the worst insurance company abuses.

A Health Care Reform Repeal Bill was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives. The bill would eliminate provisions of the new law that are already benefiting consumers in the 15th Congressional District, effectively taking away no-cost preventive care for 77,000 seniors in Medicare, and 65,500 young adults would lose their insurance coverage through their parents' health plans sometimes just after they finish school and as they are looking for a job.

With the Health Care Repeal bill expected to be voted on in Congress this week, simular events are being held in Ohio at other congressional district offices. Constituents delivered petitions to Speaker Boehner's office in West Chester Tuesday and groups are organizing constuents to meet at Fountain Square today to deliver petitions to Rep. Steve Chabot's Office in Cincinnati today.

Online petitions were also sent to Rep. Renacci's office in the 16th Congressional District as well as to Rep. Johnson in OH-8.

From Left to Right: Marianne Steger, from AFSCME Ohio Council 8, Betty Thomas, Retiree coordinator AFSCME Ohio Council 8, Norm Wernet, Ohio Alliance for Retired Americans, and Lonnie Blackwell the president of our retirees chapter 1184 (20,000 AFSCME members across Ohio).

OCHC Statehouse Press Conference 1-19-2011

Some of the stories in the press conference below, came from the ProgressOhio e-mail that was sent out asking for health care stories.

OREGON

Report from HCAN Partner Oregon Action

We had a great action today in Medford, OR.  We had 40 folks at the Medford Library for a press/ community education rally.  Speaker included leaders from SEIU, Rev Bill McDonald from the faith community and Oregon Action and 3 stories from people effected by repeal.  There were 3 tv stations ( KOBI, KTVL and KDRV).  Additionally we had a story in the Mail Tribune announcing the event yesterday Jan 18.  There we two pre stories on KOBI which included a wonderful 5 minute interview with Michelle Glass, young Oregon Action leader. Everyone signed a letter to Rep Greg Walden and we announced our next HCAN meeting for Feb 22.

We had a lot of spirit and willingness to continue to be an organized force for health care progress.

PENNSYLVANIA

From HCAN partners PUP, Action United and Penn Action

Coverage from Tuesday's PA Events:

Post Gazette: Vote expected today on health care repeal

The Tribune-Democrat: Critz, Shuster split on health care

Public News Service: PA Mom Testifies about Healthcare Reform in D.C. Today

Lebanon Event

Here is the report from the event in Lebanon. We had about 20 people attend. We had Jake Long regional co director from the Harrisburg Labor Council Speak, Rev Dan Donomoyer and Bobbie Warshaw a Medicaid recipient talked about the benefits she received. There was also TV there and we are still looking for the link.

Lebanon Daily News - Ralliers: No to health care repeal

Scranton, PA Event

Lackawanna County Courthouse, Scranton PA

In addition to these events, Penn Action recruited Stacie Ritter, a woman with twins who have a pre-existing condition, to come to DC and be part of Speaker Pelosi's hearing to highlight people impacted by ACA repeal.  Stacie got great coverage all over the country including the story below.

Public News Service-PA

January 18, 2011

PA Mom Testifies about Healthcare Reform in D.C. Today

LANCASTER, Penn. - A Pennsylvania woman whose family was driven to bankruptcy after her twin four-year-old daughters were diagnosed with leukemia, is testifying on Capitol Hill today (Tuesday). Staci Ritter says thw girls' medical treatment has been very costly, and the bills piled up when an insurance company refused to pay for some of it.

As the U.S. House of Representatives gears up to vote on whether to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act, Ritter's message to lawmakers is that needs to remain intact – to protect families like hers, who are dealing with catastrophic illnesses.

"I'm afraid that if they repeal the mandate, that will enable insurers to be able to deny children – like mine, who have pre-existing conditions – health care."

Ritter says the family's situation became more serious after her husband's company signed on with a new insurance carrier, and problems emerged with their daughters' coverage.

"My children are expensive. Anybody with a pre-existing condition is a liability, they'll openly admit it – so, what do we do to protect these people?"

Ritter says she's fearful of a repeal of health care reform, not just because of the impact it could have on her daughters today.

"Each time they pick away at it, they take away something that's protecting my children and their future; protecting them from discrimination, protecting them from being able to afford insurance to begin with."

She will testify before the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, part of the House Democratic Caucus. Her story turns out better than some, but Ritter says that's only because she went after the insurance company publicly and was able to come to a settlement. Recently, several lawmakers who favor repealing the Affordable Care Act, including new House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), released a report entitled "ObamaCare: Budget Busting, Job-Killing Health Care Law."

TENNESSEE

Report Back from Tennessee Citizen Action

State Capitol Rally To Fight Repeal Of Health Care Reform (WTVF News channel 5)

Middle Tenn. voices heard on health care repeal (WKRN News 2)

Tennessee Report: TNCA Urges Abandonment of Federal Health Care Law Repeal & Resistance Efforts

Tennessee Report: Reform v. Repeal; Mary & Co v. Mae & Co

Memphis Commercial Appeal: Tennessee health care reform backers cite benefits - Urge lawmakers to leave federal plan alone

WASHINGTON

Report from WA MSA

Coverage of Main Street Alliance members in the Vancouver Columbian yesterday.

Health care debate regains center stage - Herrera Beutler supports GOP repeal push

By Howard Buck Columbian Staff Reporter

Originally published January 18, 2011 at 4:23 p.m., updated January 18, 2011 at 7:25 p.m.

Photo by Steven Lane

Local business owner Don Orange speaks about health care reform at a press conference staged by Organizing for America at Vancouver Marketplace on Tuesday.

WEST VIRGINIA

Report from West Virginia Citizen Action Group

WVCAG and partners held a 2PM press conference at the state capitol ahead of the vote to repeal ACA. Press covering the event were: TV 13 (CBS); WV News Service (radio); Charleston Gazette & Daily Mail (print)

Speakers were:

Gary Zuckett, WV Citizen Action Group
Perry Bryant, WV for Affordable Health Care
WV Senator Dr. Ron Stollings, Chair HHR Committee
WV Senator Dr. Dan Foster, member HHR Committee
Renate Pore, WV Center On Budget & Policy

WISCONSIN

Report from HCAN Partner Citizen Action of Wisconsin

Press from "No Repeal" action at Rep. Paul Ryan's office, 1/18:

WDJT TV 58 (CBS) Milwaukee (January 18, 2011) Wisconsin Joins Health Care Reform Fight

WISN TV 12 (ABC) Milwaukee (January 18, 2011) Interview with Brian Rothgery on repeal action at Paul Ryan's office (no link available)

WTMJ TV 4 (NBC) Milwaukee (January 18, 2011) Health Care Rally Outside Rep. Ryan's Office

Wisconsin Radio Network (January 18,  2011) Rallying against repeal

WRJN Radio 1400 AM Racine (January 18, 2011) 4:05 PM news break (podcast)

Racine Journal-Times (January 18, 2011) Protest outside Paul Ryan's office

Photos from Racine Journal Times picked up by AP:

Atlanta Journal Constitution (January 18, 2011) Congress tones down the rhetoric after shootings

Deseret News (Salt Lake City) (January 18, 2011) Congress tones down the rhetoric after shootings

The Republic (Columbus, IN) (January 18, 2011) Congress tones down the rhetoric after shootings

Christian Science Monitor (January 18,  2011) Health-care reform: How Democrats plan to crash House GOP's repeal party

Arizona Daily Star (January 18, 2011) Bid to repeal health law goes on, but with civil tone

News Times (Danbury, CT) (January 18, 2011)

MySanAntonio.com (January 18, 2011) Congress tones down the rhetoric after shootings

WASHINGTON, DC

Rally & Visibility Outside the Capitol yesterday.

Stacie Ritter's story was told in about 60 television markets across the country yesterday thanks mostly to NBC affiliates that picked up a Washington report on the event.

Stacie and her daughters are shown above testifying that repeal would mean her daughters would be at risk of losing their health coverage because of pre-existing conditions. Several stations ran the story more than once.

Read more…

Just one day after the Republican Party voted to take away benefits from consumers and revive the insurance companies’ stranglehold on health care, industry leader UnitedHealth Group said its full-year profit jumped 21% to $4.6 billion in 2010. “Nothing demonstrates more clearly why the Republicans are so bent on undermining the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and why the House voted yesterday to repeal it,” said Ethan Rome, executive director of Health Care for America Now (HCAN), the 1,000-member coalition that led the fight for the new health care law. Analysts are expecting announcements of strong profit growth from other health insurance companies in the next few weeks.

“The Republicans’ reckless repeal plan will put insurance companies back in charge of our health care, restore the ‘anything-goes’ premium-rate hikes that are crushing consumers and businesses and raise the federal budget deficit to heights never before seen,” Rome said. “The health insurance industry is getting what it paid for in the 2010 elections – a free hand to do anything to make obscene profits. The GOP’s repeal vote was about letting the insurance companies off the hook and taking away important consumer benefits that matter to real people, like the ban on denying care to people with pre-existing conditions, big savings on drug costs for seniors and new caps on how much of each premium dollar goes to overhead and profits.”

UnitedHealth, a bellwether for the industry, this morning reported $4.6 billion in profit last year, up from $3.8 billion the year before. Last year UnitedHealth spent 80.6 percent of its premium revenue on actual medical care, a far lower ratethan in 2009. At the same time, insurers have been pursuing huge rate increases across the nation.

Wall Street knows that the ACA is likely to curb profits at many insurance companies in 2011, so the industry is especially interested in repealing new rules that cap how much premium money insurers may use for executive pay, profits and administration. That would explain why Congressman John Carter (R-Tex.), the Republican conference secretary, has pledged to block those rules.

Empowered by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, corporate-backed groups intent on the repeal of the health care law spent enormous sums to elect pro-repeal candidates, according to a new study by People for the American Way. The industry also fought the law by funneling $86 million to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce last year and spent more than $769 million on lobbyists in the past four years. It isn’t known yet how much insurers gave to other major front groups. The Republicans have also hired former insurance industry lobbyists into key staff roles, including Julie Goon, a former lobbyist with the industry’s trade group, in a senior role with the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Health Care for America Now launched a multifaceted counterattack against the Republican repeal plan this week that included:

· 42 events in 23 states, garnering significantmedia coverage. Click here for photos and clips.

· Nearly 20,000 constituent phone calls to House Republicans’ offices.

· An online anti-repeal advertising campaign that totaled more than 2.3 million impressions.

· Coverage by 60 television stations of HCAN advocate Stacie Ritter’s story about fighting for coverage for her twin daughters after their cancer treatment.

· Publication by Ethan Rome of a column in Huffington Post that included a graphic comparison of the ACA and repeal.

· An anti-repeal demonstration on Capitol Hill before the vote on Wednesday.

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Health Care for America Now is a national grassroots coalition of more than 1,000 organizations in 46 states representing 30 million people. HCAN led the fight over the past two years to win passage of healthreform and to keep Congress from being steamrolled by corporate special interests.

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The extremists went wild. Rumors swept across the land. Some Tea Party types claimed the bill was 10,000 pages. Slate called the explosive stack-of-paper obsession "peculiar." Ultimately, the New York Times set the record straight: "In the original version," the Times said, "H.R. 3590 as passed by the Senate on Dec. 24, 2009, ran to some 2,400 pages, although with a very large font, triple spacing and huge left and right margins." The newspaper went on to explain that, "With normal margins the document probably would shrink to about 500 pages or so." Which meant the bill was not really that long when compared to other major bills, such as the financial reform law and past budget deals.

In the November mid-term elections, the Republicans ran on a platform of change, and change is what we got. Not only will the House Republicans vote to repeal the new health care law this week, they're going to do so with a bill that's only two pages long.

This is a triumph of conciseness, a 247-word beacon of brevity. The low word-count works especially well for the GOP, given the party's unfinished "repeal and replace" campaign pledge. The Republicans addressed repeal, but they haven't quite gotten to the "replace" part. That, we're told, is a work in progress, and the question is being referred to various House committees to kick around for months.

In Sunday's Washington Post, reporter Amy Goldstein noted that the Republican repeal vote is "the prelude to a two-pronged strategy that is likely to last throughout the year, or longer." Great. Just what we need — another interminable debate on health care when the Republicans ought to be focusing on bipartisan solutions to create jobs. Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), the new House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman, said it "may take time" for the GOP to develop a health care plan. Upton, who has been in Congress since 1987, has had only 24 years to come up with some health care ideas of his own. Instead, he hired Julie Goon, the former top lobbyist for the health insurance industry's biggest trade group, as his special adviser.

I'm not sure what the Republican "replace" plan is (or how many pages it will be), but I know their two-page repeal bill is a bad deal for America's families, seniors and small businesses.

The Republican repeal bill will take away dozens of benefits and important consumer protections that are making a real difference in peoples' lives right now. When the Republicans vote for repeal, they'll be taking away people's newly won freedom from fear of insurers denying their care, dropping them when their sick and imposing double-digit premium hikes with impunity. They'll be booting young adults off their parents' health plans. They'll be telling seniors they have to pay back the $250 donut hole checks they received to help buy prescription medications and give up their new 50% discount on brand-name drugs. The Republican repeal plan will force nearly 900,000 American families a year into bankruptcy because of huge medical bills. And it will take job-creating tax credits away from small businesses.

Speaker John Boehner and the Republicans don't want the public to know the truth about the Affordable Care Act and what their repeal plan will take away from America's consumers. And you can bet the debate about repeal will be filled with misleading information from Boehner and the new Republican majority. To help folks see beyond the rhetoric, Health Care for America Now made a chart that tells the truth. You can read and download a printable, high-resolution version with citations here and below.

Click here to download the above as a printable fact sheet with citations.

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The rhetoric of repeal is just a smoke screen to obscure the real objective of the “repeal and replace” caucus: to preserve the sections of the law that big insurance and its business allies like and strip out the regulations and consumer protections they don’t like.

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The rhetoric of repeal is just a smoke screen to obscure the real objective of the “repeal and replace” caucus: to preserve the sections of the law that big insurance and its business allies like and strip out the regulations and consumer protections they don’t like.

read more

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“Today, the health insurance industry got what it paid for in the 2010 elections, a Republican majority determined to let theinsurance companies off the hook and kill the new law’s strong consumer protections, such as the ban on denying sick people care. This law is already making a real difference in the lives of millions of Americans by stopping health insurers from denying care, dropping people when they’re sick and jacking up rates anytime they please. The Republicans have scheduled a fast-track repeal vote next week to satisfy their extremist Tea Party base and to pay back the health insurance companies that funded their election campaigns.

“At the same time Speaker Boehner railed sanctimoniously against ‘fast legislating’ and called for ‘allowing additional amendments and open debate,’ he was preparing to skip the usual legislative processes and rush the repeal vote. Boehner said he and his party were “humbled” by the American people, but it’s hubris that’s driving the Republicans’ reckless effort to rush a vote to give our health care back to the insurance companies.

“What do the Republicans want to replace the new law with? Nothing. They're referring that question to House committees that will deliberate for months and play political football with our lives and health.

“Repeal means letting the insurance companies run roughshod over consumers, deny our care and raise our rates with impunity. When the Republicans vote for repeal on Jan. 12, they’ll be telling seniors to pay back the $250 donut hole checks they received to help buy prescription drugs. They’ll be booting young adults off their parents’ health plans. And they’ll be taking away the American people’s newly won freedom from the fear of bankruptcy caused by crushing medical bills. We’re finally getting the insurance companies off our backs and the first thing the Republicans want to do is let them off the hook.”

Health Care for America Now today launched an online petition to urge Republicans in Congress to end their all-out assault on the Affordable Care Act.

Read more…

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Affordable Care Act expected to generate up to $2 billion in rebates

Washington, DC – Today the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced decisions on the last two requests from states to modify the health insurance company minimum medical loss ratios in the individual market required by the Affordable Care Act. HHS also released the forms that health insurance companies will be required to send to customers indicating whether their health plan spent at least 80 cents of every premium dollar on actual health care rather than overhead and profits. Companies that fail to meet that 80/20 standard will declare on the forms the amount of the rebate.

Health Care for America Now (HCAN), the nation's leading grassroots health care advocacy organization, released the following statement from Executive Director Ethan Rome:

“The 80/20 standard is one of the most effective consumer protections in the health care law and is already reducing premiums for individuals and small businesses. Step by step, this law is taking insurance companies out of the driver's seat and giving consumers control over their health care.

“Some states have gone out of their way to protect the greediest insurers, the ones that keep way too much premium money for profits and administration, by petitioning HHS to exempt them from the rules. HHS worked on behalf of consumers to deny or modify state requests that would have robbed consumers of $323 million in 2011 alone. Health insurers are expected to refund up to $2 billion this year as a result of the law. This is a big deal for consumers in a tough economy and another milestone in the implementation of the health care law.”

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Health Care for America Now is the nation’s leading grassroots health care advocacy organization. HCAN led the fight to win passage of health reform and to keep Congress from being steamrolled by corporate special interests.

Numerous Conflicts Make It Impossible for Thomas to Render Fair, Impartial Decision on Affordable Care Act, Signers Say

Washington, DC – More than 100,000 people have signed a petition demanding that U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas recuse himself from the upcoming health care reform law case, and two progressive organizations will submit the signatures to the court tomorrow. The petition was organized by Health Care for America Now (HCAN), the nation's leading grassroots health care advocacy organization, and The Other 98%, a grassroots network of activists fighting Big Money in politics. Signatures continue to roll in at a steady clip, the groups said.

Activists from the two organizations will deliver the petition to the high court in Washington, D.C., on Friday, Feb. 17, at 9:30 a.m. The delivery will feature powerful visuals that demonstrate the public outrage at Thomas’s lack of ethics.

Justice Thomas has significant conflicts of interest related to his wife’s employment as an agitator on behalf of conservative groups hostile to the law as well as his own involvement with groups opposed to the law, and it is impossible for him to render a fair, impartial decision, the petition said. The Supreme Court will hear extensive oral arguments on the landmark case from March 26 to 28 and will decide the case by June.

“Justice Thomas has a hugely important choice to make today,” said Other 98% co-founder John Sellers. “Is he going to step down from a case where he has a direct financial interest, or is he going to rule on it and set an extremely dangerous precedent for future rulings? Let's be clear: we're talking about a Supreme Court Justice who has received half a million dollars in unreported household income from lobbying against the bill. Thomas has been wined, dined and paid by the law firm arguing the case, and he's taken part in far-right strategy sessions organized by the key front group leading this fight.”

“If Justice Thomas fails to recuse himself, it will threaten the integrity of the entire Supreme Court,” said HCAN Executive Director Ethan Rome. “Justice Thomas personally has aligned himself with conservative zealots and extremist organizations dedicated to throwing out the law. Unbelievably, on the same day the high court took this case, he and Associate Justice Antonin Scalia were honored at a dinner sponsored by the law firm that will argue the case before the high court. Justice Thomas spoke at a secret conclave run by the billionaire Koch Brothers to raise funds for extremist front groups like Americans for Prosperity.

“Justice Thomas has so many conflicts of interest that he should recuse himself now, before the case goes any farther. Political groups determined to repeal or overturn the Affordable Care Act have been filling his family bank account for years. His wife Virginia has been a crusader in the campaign to defeat the law, and that has provided the Thomases with a healthy income. There is simply no way that Justice Thomas can render a fair decision in this important case.”

Justice Thomas failed to disclose until January 2011 that his wife received income of nearly $690,000 between 2003 and 2006 from the Heritage Foundation, a leading proponent of overturning the Affordable Care Act.

Last year 74 members of the House of Representatives took the highly unusual step of requesting that Justice Thomas remove himself from participation in deliberations on the Affordable Care Act.

“Americans want to believe we have a genuinely independent judiciary, one that doesn't bend the rules for the express benefit of huge multinational corporations, or a lobbying paycheck,” said Andrew Boyd, co-founder of The Other 98%. “That belief took a fatal blow with the Citizens United ruling. Let's hope that Justice Thomas doesn't bury that belief outright by ruling on a case where he has a clear conflict of interest.”

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Health Care for America Now is the nation’s leading grassroots health care advocacy organization. HCAN led the fight to win passage of health reform and to keep Congress from being steamrolled by corporate special interests.

The Other 98% is a grassroots network of concerned Americans fed up with the status quo in Washington. We've been fighting, since Tax Day 2010, against the bankers, CEOs and lobbyists who have hijacked our democracy to serve themselves at the expense of everyone else. We are everywhere. And we are hopeful. Other98.com

The Coalition to Protect Women's Health Care was assembled after access to contraception came under attack because Catholic bishops do not want hospitals and universities affiliated with religious groups to cover contraception in their health plans, even though they do employ people of all faiths, receive government funds and do business with the general public. Houses of worship are exempt from the rule. A majority of Catholics and the vast majority of overall population support access to birth control.

President Obama has stood strong in guaranteeing that women have access to birth control by pushing the cost of contraception on to insurers, without limiting access to care for women. Republican leaders and presidential candidates have attacked the contraception coverage rule, claiming it is an issue of religious freedom rather than a question of women's fundamental rights to care for their own health without interference from government, religion or anyone else.

The coalition will work to protect women's health in the face of politically motivated attacks.

Birth control is used not only for family planning, but also to treat or prevent many serious health conditions, including cancer. Ninety-nine percent of sexually active American women have used birth control at some point in their lives, and birth control coverage saves money and reduces costs to women and employers.

Get more facts here.

Health Care for America Now is proud to stand with the Coalition to Protect Women's Health Care.

After weeks of appalling and politically motivated attacks from Republicans, today President Obama reaffirmed his commitment to women's health by standing firm on his support for no-cost contraception in the face of a Republican onslaught. This is a major victory for women.

The Republicans and other opponents are already trashing this new step forward because they really want to allow ALL employers to deny women access to birth control no matter what. This is unacceptable.

Please urge your Members of Congress to support access to birth control and stop the Republican war on women.

“After weeks of appalling and politically motivated attacks from Republicans, today’s decision by President Obama on the contraceptive rule is a major victory for women and families. The president stood firm and guaranteed that women will still have access to no-cost birth control no matter where they work.

“The GOP trumped up a hugely divisive fight in hopes of distracting the nation from the improving economy. We expect the Republicans and other opponents to stand down from their war on women, and we expect insurance companies to step up and behave responsibly to protect women’s access to no-cost birth control wherever they are employed. Health insurance companies have the resources to make this alternative policy work and help the entire country move on to critical issues like creating jobs. It’s time to move on from this issue.”

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Health Care for America Now is the nation’s leading grassroots health care advocacy organization. HCAN led the fight to win passage of health reform and to keep Congress from being steamrolled by corporate special interests.

The report, found on the Institute's state policy page, identifies 28 states that require contraception coverage, including eight that provide no religious exemption. Under the ruling from the Department of Health and Human Services, churches are exempt while religious hospitals and educational institutions that employ and provide services to the public are not.

States that have no exemptions for religious institutions like hospitals and schools include Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Montana, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, Texas, Vermont, Virginia and Washington.

Washington, DC – Health Care for America Now (HCAN), the nation's leading grassroots health care advocacy organization, joined with Americans United for Change and staged a protest today in response to Mitt Romney’s corporate fundraiser in Washington. After the action, which featured Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, HCAN released the following statement from Executive Director Ethan Rome:

“If you’re a corporate special interest and want to buy a presidential candidate, Mitt Romney put himself up for sale tonight at a pay-to-play ‘policy roundtable.’ He’s reportedly raising $1 million for his campaign by taking huge checks from Wall Street, Big Oil and the health insurance companies. It’s no wonder Romney flip-flopped on health reform and contraception coverage and took the side of corporate interests like health insurance companies over consumers. What policies are the special interests buying tonight?”

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Health Care for America Now is the nation’s leading grassroots health care advocacy organization. HCAN led the fight to win passage of health reform and to keep Congress from being steamrolled by corporate special interests.

Roughly 6-in-10 Catholics (58%) believe that employers should be required to provide their employees with health care plans that cover contraception.

The bishops are critical of the requirement and asked for an exemption for Catholic institutions such as hospitals and educational institutions, regardless of the employee’s religion. Catholics who participated in the poll said they favored the position of the Health and Human ServicesDepartment:

A majority of Catholics (52%) say that religiously affiliated colleges and hospitals should have to provide coverage that includes contraception.

 
A separate poll by Public Policy Polling found that 56% voters support the Obama Administration in requiring religious employers other than houses of worship to cover birth control just like other health plans. The poll suggests that Mitt Romney’s strong criticism of the requirement and his promise to allow religious groups to opt out of it isn’t likely to help him much in a head-to-head contest with the President.

“This bill would rob consumers of billions of dollars in rebates and give the money to insurance companies that are already making record profits. It’s outrageous to take money from struggling families and small businesses and hand it over to Wall Street-driven health insurance companies. This bill would eviscerate one of the toughest consumer protections in the Affordable Care Act, which has already brought down premiums in some states.

“Senators who join this effort are making a clear choice to put the unbridled greed of insurance companies ahead of the needs of their constituents. They want to hide sales costs in their already skyrocketing premiums in a way that won’t even help the insurance agents who are lobbying for this bill. Instead, the money will wind up in insurance company bank accounts.

“Senators should dismiss this anti-consumer legislation and side with the public, not the health insurance industry.”

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Health Care for America Now is the nation’s leading grassroots health care advocacy organization. HCAN led the fight to win passage of health reform and to keep Congress from being steamrolled by corporate special interests.

Nearly one-third of Medicaid spending goes to long-term care. The ACA includes a provision called the CLASS Act that was an attempt to create a new way for people to plan for future expenses and finance the in-home assistance they will need, such as hiring a home caregiver to help with tasks of daily living without requiring families to impoverish themselves to qualify for Medicaid. The repeal effort is purely political because implementation of the program has not been scheduled.

Here is a statement from Ethan Rome, executive director of Health Care for America Now, the nation’s leading grassroots health care advocacy organization, on today’s action by House Republicans:

“Once again, the Republicans are punishing the American people in an attempt to hurt President Obama politically, even if that means repealing the only health reform provision that could someday help seniors and people with disabilities live independently and stay out of nursing homes. The CLASS Act may not be ready for implementation yet, but the Republicans showed that they will never help seniors live with dignity and independence. The GOP will never provide relief to America’s middle-class families struggling with the overwhelming financial challenges of caring for their aging parents. If the Republicans would put politics aside, Congress could create a financially stable and fair structure for long-term care.

“As Republicans across the country step up their efforts to cut state and federal Medicaid budgets in their permanent war against the middle class, experts agree that the nation must devise a long-term care plan. It’s simple math: while two-thirds of the population is likely to need long-term care, few seniors can independently afford the staggering private cost of nursing homes and assisted-living facilities. Half of retirees have less than $55,000 in assets, and nursing homes charge about $75,000 each year.

“It is irresponsible for the Republicans to pretend that the long-term care problem will just go away simply because they ignore it. It’s painfully clear that Speaker John Boehner and other GOP leaders are as callous as they are hyper-partisan.”

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Health Care for America Now is the nation’s leading grassroots health care advocacy organization. HCAN led the fight to win passage of health reform and to keep Congress from being steamrolled by corporate special interests.

Romney is a staunch supporter of Congressman Paul Ryan's radical budget plan to end Medicare and Medicaid and dramatically increase health care costs for seniors struggling to make ends meet. Ryan wants to put Medicare beneficiaries at the mercy of profit-mad private health insurance companies and force seniors to fork over at least $6,400 more per year on health care while letting billionaires and corporations skip out on their taxes. Romney and the Republicans want to strip seniors of new drug benefits and preventive care provided by the Affordable Care Act.

Ryan's recent partnership with Senator Ron Wyden doesn't soften the blow any. It's the same bad plan with a twist and a lone Democratic supporter. Shame on Romney for lying to Florida seniors as he cheers on Ryan's plan to take away their health care and retirement security.

In their obsession to repeal "Obamacare," the Republican presidential candidates are committed to taking away dozens of consumer protections and benefits that are already making a huge difference in people's lives.

The Republicans' Medicare privatization plan is part of the GOP's larger attack on our country's shrinking middle class and the promise of the American Dream: that if you work hard and play by the rules you can have a good job with good wages and benefits, provide a better life for your children and retire with dignity.

As has been widely documented, Romney has an aversion to the truth and a problem keeping track of his own flip-flops. His lies about Medicare and Social Security are just the latest examples. There's only one true and consistent thing to be said about Mitt Romney: he's the ultimate candidate of the Wall Street profiteers who are so intent on making excessive amounts of money that they're happy to wreck our economy and destroy the lives of millions of America's families to get what they want.

“Mitt Romney has lied day after day on the campaign trail, but yesterday he topped himself when he pledged to preserve Medicare and Social Security. The truth is the exact opposite: Mitt Romney and the Republicans want to eliminate Medicare and Social Security as we know them and hand them over to Wall Street with a reckless privatization scheme. Romney is a staunch supporter of Congressman Paul Ryan’s radical budget plan to end Medicare and dramatically increase health care costs for seniors struggling to make ends meet. Ryan wants to put Medicare beneficiaries at the mercy of profit-mad private health insurance companies and force seniors to spend another $6,400 a year on health care while letting billionaires and corporations skip out on their taxes. Romney and the Republicans want to strip seniors of new drug benefits and preventive care provided by the Affordable Care Act.

“The Republicans’ Medicare privatization plan is part of the GOP's larger attack on our country's shrinking middle class and the promise of the American Dream: that if you work hard and play by the rules you can have a good job with good wages and benefits, provide a better life for your children and retire with dignity. Romney supports an extremist plan that is wrong for our country. Shame on him for lying to Florida seniors as he cheers on Ryan’s plan to take away their health care and retirement security.”

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Health Care for America Now is the nation’s leading grassroots health care advocacy organization. HCAN led the fight to win passage of health reform and to keep Congress from being steamrolled by corporate special interests.

The ACA states that insurers must spend 80% of the premiums they collect on actual health services. States may request a waiver from the medical loss ratio rule if it would "destabilize the individual market" of that state. If insurers do not meet the requirement, they must pay the difference in rebates to their customers.

According to HHS:

[HHS has] determined that the evidence presented does not establish a reasonable likelihood that the application of an 80 percent MLR standard will destabilize Texas’ individual market. Consequently, we have determined not to adjust the MLR standard in Texas’ individual market and, thereby, ensure that consumers receive the benefit of this provision of the Affordable Care Act.

This promises to return $260 million to Texas consumers over three years. Other states have also attempted to obtain MLR waivers as part of a strategy by Republican leaders to eliminate and weaken the MLR provisions. In Florida, where HHS also recent rejected a waiver request ensuring consumer rebates in that state $145 million, Gov. Rick Scott twice tried to rip off consumers in his state on behalf of insurance companies.

The rejection of Texas's waiver request is a resounding victory for health insurance customers and a terrific example of the many consumer protections provided by the ACA.

Listen to clips from the radio programs:

The Thom Hartman Program

Download audio file (ethan-rome-on-thp-012012.mp3)

Jeff Santos on Labor Owned Radio

Download audio file (jeff-santos-ethan-rome-1-20-12.mp3)

The Rick Smith Show

Download audio file (ethan-rome-on-rick-smith.mp3)

“President Obama laid out a clear, sensible vision to restore the health of America’s economy, create jobs and address the income inequality that is weakening our nation. America needs to rally around this plan.

“But before the President even walked into Congress tonight, the Republicans were trash-talking his speech. They're too busy trying to hurt him politically instead of helping the country with real ideas and a willingness to roll up their sleeves and get things done.

“Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who took a break from his campaign to silence workers' voices on the job to give the GOP rebuttal, showed that the Republicans' priority is to gain political advantage no matter how badly that might hurt America’s families and businesses. Daniels recycled tired Republican rhetoric and bankrupt ideas to cover up the GOP's relentless assault on the middle class.

“Daniels can't hide the record. The Republicans have opposed making health care affordable, they’ve blocked every effort to create jobs, they’ve been trying to undermine the laws that hold banks accountable and they’ve rejected every step needed to revitalize the U.S. economy.

“As the Republicans pursue their toxic brand of hyper-partisan politics to help the 1 percent and the wealthiest corporations and ignore the rest of us, President Obama outlined concrete plans to give everyone a fair shot at achieving the American Dream.”

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Health Care for America Now is the nation’s leading grassroots health care advocacy organization. HCAN led the fight to win passage of health reform and to keep Congress from being steamrolled by corporate special interests.

In his State of the Union address, President Obama has a compelling story to tell the country about the importance of health security to America's middle class and why we have to stop the Republican assault on Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The ACA is an extraordinary accomplishment and is already making a huge difference in people's lives by making health care more affordable for families and businesses and protecting consumers from insurance company abuses. Along with Social Security, these bedrock programs are essential to ensuring that everyone in this country has a fair shot at achieving the American Dream.

The president has plenty of examples to make his case. Thanks to the ACA, 2.5 million young adults were able to obtain health coverage this past year. The worst practices of big insurance companies, including denying coverage for pre-existing conditions, are now against the law. Health care is becoming more affordable for small businesses and seniors on Medicare. When fully implemented the law will provide tens of millions of Americans the same range of coverage choices as members of Congress. People will have peace of mind that they will always be able to afford good coverage — even if they lose a job, start a small business or retire early. These are powerful themes the President could discuss, and polling has repeatedly shown that they are highly valued by the American people despite relentless attacks on the law by the Republicans.

The president could use the speech to remind the nation that Medicare and Medicaid are the cornerstones of our health care system and provide equal opportunity for all. We don't want a society that leaves people to fend for themselves when they fall ill. Only if everyone has affordable health care can we have a vibrant middle class to power the world's leading economy.

The stakes are huge. If the Republicans get their way and turn Medicaid into a so-called block grant, millions of seniors would be thrown out of nursing homes. Middle class families would be slammed with crushing health care costs for their parents while struggling to make ends meet, save for their own retirement and send kids to college. Children and people with disabilities will go without needed care. Huge costs will be shifted to state governments, jobs will be lost and the economy will be hurt.

The Republicans want to eliminate Medicare as we know it and send our parents and grandparents into bankruptcy. Their plan would transform guaranteed health care benefits for seniors into a voucher scheme that would send hundreds of billions of dollars directly to private insurance companies. Retirees would be forced to pay two to three times more out of their pockets to care for themselves, and it would fall to adult children and extended families to bankroll the difference - whether they can afford to or not.

Every Republican plan to 'reform' Medicare or Medicaid is just another way to shift health costs to seniors and families who cannot afford to pay more. Were the Republicans to succeed in repealing the ACA, they have nothing to replace it with except a return to the days when consumers were at the mercy of profit-hungry insurance companies.

A lot of work remains to be done, but when it comes to health care the State of the Union is strong. President Obama is fortunate to have a Health and Human Services Department that's doing a solid job implementing the ACA and protecting our health security. We must stand strong to fight the GOP's hyper-partisan attacks on the health care programs that are making America healthier and moving our great country closer to achieving its promise.

In a letter to the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation, HHS was in agreement with a letter HCAN sent in protest of Florida's exemption earlier this week. According to HHS, the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation did not demonstrate that MLR requirement would lead to decreased consumer access to brokers or insurers in the Florida market.

The rejection by HHS of Florida's exemption will put $145 million in health insurance rebates back into the pockets of Floridians. This second attempt to deny consumers rebates is a politically motivated ploy by extremist Florida Governor Rick Scott, a former health care executive who made a fortune running a company that conducted a massive fraud on Medicare and Medicaid programs.

Part of nationwide week of protest on 2nd Anniversary of Citizens United ruling

Washington, DC – On the second anniversary of the much-despised Citizens United ruling, protesters gathered at the high court and unfurled a large banner reading “U.S. Supreme Koch” to protest the undue influence that far-right special interests and billionaires like the Koch brothers wield over the Court and U.S. politics.

Two years ago, the Citizens United ruling opened the floodgates to secretive and unlimited corporate political contributions and gave a major boost to the rapidly expanding political empire of David and Charles Koch and those of other millionaires and billionaires.

“The Kochs and their kind are engaged in a hostile corporate takeover of our nation’s political system,” said John Sellers, co-founder of The Other 98%. "We've come to the scene of the crime today – the U.S. Supreme Court – to tell the justices exactly what we think of the infamous Citizens United ruling that made that takeover possible.”

“The Supreme Court has undermined government of, by and for the actual people by defining corporations as people and money as speech,” said Ethan Rome, executive director of Health Care for America Now, the largest grassroots health care advocacy organization. “The Citizens United ruling has been a disaster for the middle class, which is under constant assault in Congress and in the Supreme Court by Republicans accountable only to big corporations and the wealthy. It’s crucial that the justices be independent of corporate influences when they rule on matters like the health care case, which will forever affect health insurance consumers and 100 million people who rely on Medicare and Medicaid.”

Insurance companies and other big business interests, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have fought comprehensive health care reform for years, spending millions on lobbying, political contributions and misinformation campaigns that hurt consumers. Citizens United created a toxic political environment in which corporations can spend unlimited sums of money to oppose candidates and legislation that would benefit seniors, families and businesses.

Pictures and video clips will be posted later today at http://www.healthcareforamericanow.org and http://other98.com/citizens-united-supreme-court-action/.

The protesters represented a host of citizens groups, including The Other 98%, Health Care for America Now, Backbone Campaign, Greenpeace, Velvet Revolution and AFSCME.

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Health Care for America Now is the nation’s leading grassroots health care advocacy organization. HCAN led the fight over the past two years to win passage of health reform and to keep Congress from being steamrolled by corporate special interests.

The Other 98% is a grassroots network of concerned folks and online activists fed up with the status quo in Washington. We've been fighting, since Tax Day 2010, against the bankers, CEOs and lobbyists who have hijacked our democracy to serve themselves at the expense of everyone else. We are everywhere. And we are hopeful.

Washington, DC – One year ago today, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Fortunately for millions of Americans who have been receiving important health benefits and consumer protections from the ACA, the Senate rejected the GOP’s actions. Here is a statement about the Republicans’ continuing campaign to undermine America’s health security from Ethan Rome, executive director of Health Care for America Now, the nation’s leading grassroots health care advocacy organization:

“The Republicans in Congress want to repeal the health care law even though they have no replacement plan, which they’ve promised from the moment they passed repeal. Instead, they want to give our health care back to the insurance companies and force every consumer to fend for themselves. Their assault on health care is the tip of the spear in the GOP’s war on the middle class. Repealing the ACA would take away health coverage from millions of young adults, force seniors to pay more for prescription drugs, revoke health insurance tax credits from small businesses, and restore insurers’ unfettered power to jack up our rates, cancel our benefits and deny coverage for those with pre-existing health conditions.

“But the Republicans in Congress won’t be satisfied by taking away the ACA’s benefits and protections, which are helping millions. They also want to end Medicare and Medicaid as we know them. The GOP’s presidential candidates have done no better, competing over who would be the first to end cost-saving benefits and consumer protections that are making a material difference in the lives of millions.They’re in a race to see who can destroy America’s seniors and middle class faster.

“It’s just plain wrong that the Republicans, their corporate sponsors and other right-wing extremists are trying to take away these benefits and rights. This is a fight about core values, about whether we want a country where people are left to fend for themselves or one where people come together through programs like Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act to provide health security and peace of mind to working families. We must stand strong to fight off the GOP’s hyper-partisan attacks on health laws that are making the country a healthier, fairer place.”

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Health Care for America Now is the nation’s leading grassroots health care advocacy organization. HCAN led the fight to win passage of health reform and to keep Congress from being steamrolled by corporate special interests.

(Washington, DC)—Social Security Works (SSW) and Health Care for America NOW (HCAN) today unveiled a new guide showing that the Republican Presidential candidates agree: If they had their way, they would raise the eligibility age, cut, privatize or do away with Medicare and Medicaid, two of America’s most successful and popular programs. The guide shows that when these Republican Presidential candidates say we need to “save” Medicare and Medicaid, what they really mean is we need to end Medicare and Medicaid.

“These programs are essential to preserving and expanding America’s middle class,” said Ethan Rome, executive director of HCAN. “The GOP wants to eliminate Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security as we know them as part of their assault on working families and the American dream. The Republicans only care about catering to the big corporations and the millionaires and billionaires who own them.”

“All five support cutting these programs so crucial to the wellbeing of America's children, families and seniors,” said Eric Kingson, co-director of SSW. “These views could not be more out of step with the American people! Medicare and Medicaid protect millions of Americans. Our families, communities, and indeed America’s recovering economy, cannot afford these radical cuts.”

Medicare and Medicaid have much at stake during the early Republican primaries and caucuses. The brief guide from HCAN and SSW includes past and current quotes about raising the Medicare eligibility age and privatization language from Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, and Rick Santorum.

The groups show how GOP candidates have proposed cutting funding of Medicare and Medicaid to children, families and seniors through the coded phrase of “block grants.”Below are some specific positions the Presidential candidates have taken in their race to the bottom for worst Medicare and Medicaid proposals:

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Social Security Works is the lead group in the Strengthen Social Security Campaign, a coalition comprised of more than 320 national and state organizations representing more than 50 million Americans from many of the nation’s leading aging, labor, disability, women’s, children, consumer, civil rights and equality organizations.

Health Care for America Now is the nation’s leading grassroots health care advocacy organization. HCAN led the fight to win passage of health reform and to keep Congress from being steamrolled by corporate special interests.

From the letter:

It is clear that the robust Florida individual insurance market will continue to provide options to consumers and, with the MLR in place, consumers will be able to measure and compare their plan options, contain premium costs, and get rebates of $145 million from insurers that fail to provide a good value. We oppose moving backward on consumer protections and urge HHS to reject Florida’s reconsideration request.

Click here to download a copy of this letter.

The brief has been filed by the NWLC and more than 60 other groups in the United States Department of Health and Human Services, et al v. State of Florida, et al case going before the Supreme Court on March 26. NWLC Co-President Marcia D. Greenberger said in a statement:

"Congress’s constitutional authority to regulate the national health care market – and the discrimination against women that is rampant in it – is settled law. Requiring insurers to provide coverage to anyone who seeks it, regardless of health status, will remedy the long-standing practice of refusing to sell insurance to women with so-called ‘pre-existing conditions’ such as pregnancy, a previous Caesarean section, or a history of having survived domestic abuse."

Organizations joining the brief include the American College of Nurse-Midwives, National Council of Women’s Organizations, Black Women’s Health Imperative, National Council of Jewish Women, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, National Partnership for Women and Families, and the Older Women’s League.

Gingrich has led this emergence with his blistering critique of Mitt Romney for being too good of a capitalist. There’s even a movie produced by a pro-Gingrich super-PAC that powerfully tells how Romney ruined people’s lives in his relentless quest for profits. Driven by the words of fired workers and a riveting anti-corporate script that could have been written by Michael Moore, Romney is blasted for shamelessly making big money by closing American businesses and eliminating thousands of jobs. I must admit, it's exciting to see what it looks like when the GOP puts capitalism on trial. In the past Romney would have been a Republican hero, a businessman who had what it takes to make tough economic decisions. But in this latest bizarre phase of GOP presidential politics, the guy is a monster.

Apparently the Republican field also hates special interest money in politics and the revolving door between government and corporate America. For weeks the candidates have hammered Gingrich for taking $1.6 million from Fannie Mae to be a “historian.” He’s laughably insisted that he never lobbied any of his former colleagues to earn that fee. Ron Paul and others have whaled on Rick Santorum for taking lobbying money from coal companies and insurers after he left the U.S. Senate. Imagine, a former elected official trading influence for cash!

But if Romney’s critics were serious (and they’re not), they'd be saying an “anything goes” approach to the free market isn't right. They would say he and all the other Wall Street sharpshooters made money at the expense of others and wronged thousands of innocent folks who believed in the American Dream.

The Republican hypocrisy is whiplash-inducing, even by the declining standards of American politics. Not that long ago Gingrich said that U.S. Senator Chris Dodd and U.S. Representative Barney Frank should go to jail for passing the landmark financial reform law that bears their names because it regulates the Romneys of Wall Street. Meanwhile the Republicans in Congress are practically employees of banks, Big Oil, insurance companies and other corporations that put profits before people.

As the candidates head into South Carolina, maybe they’ll reveal what they propose to do about the outrageous free-market excesses they’ve discovered. Exactly how would they control the Romneys of the world—teach classes on compassion and restraint at Harvard and Wharton? How have they explained this to their corporate owners and political sponsors like the billionaire Koch Brothers? I suspect the Kochs have a lot of respect for Bain Capital, the corporate vehicle Romney used for his turbocharged pursuit of private equity profits. Bain Capital made money by snatching up companies on the cheap, stripping valuable assets and even shutting some of them down. Bain collected a ton of cash while eliminating jobs and devastating families and communities. What could possibly be wrong with that?

Since the Republican presidential candidates say they like regular people now – even working and middle-class folks like the ones who give testimonials in the attack film against Romney – they should tell the Republicans in Congress to extend unemployment insurance and the payroll tax reduction. And they ought to pay for it by imposing higher taxes on the super-rich, a policy overwhelmingly supported by the American people, including the millionaires who would have to pay more.

The Republicans running for president will obviously say and do anything to get elected, even if they sound like Democrats for a little while. Whatever they may say about Romney, all the Republicans are captives of big corporations that see our country as little more than a market to exploit for their private gain.

The 1 percent and the Republican politicians they own are tearing away the foundation of one of our country’s greatest inventions, the middle class. Led by the Koch Brothers, right-wing extremists are working to undermine our democracy as well.

That’s why the Democrats have to make the 2012 election about whose side the candidates are on. Are they for the 1% and the big corporations that want to destroy the middle class, or are they fighting for the rest of us? Are they for an America “where everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share,” as the President said in Osawatomie, Kansas? Or are they for an America where the rich get richer while everyone else is left to fend for themselves in an ugly race to the bottom.

These are very different visions of our country. That’s why members of Congress and the President can’t give any ground on key issues like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. If everyone is in favor of cuts to these and other important programs, then the boundary between the two sides will be blurred beyond recognition, and the choice will not be clear on Election Day.

“This is just another attempt to eliminate Medicare as we know it. It's a purely political proposal, and it's just another version of the Ryan Republican plan to do away with Medicare and bankrupt seniors, but this time it's got one Democrat on board. Ron Wyden’s support doesn't make it bipartisan, and it doesn't change the fact that this plan is about turning over the Medicare Trust Fund to Wall Street and the health insurance companies and replacing guaranteed benefits with vouchers.

“Every Republican plan to ‘reform’ Medicare or Medicaid is just another way to shift health costs to seniors who cannot afford to pay more. I just don't understand why Senator Wyden would want to join Paul Ryan in picking the pockets of America's seniors and calling it a big idea.”

Washington, DC – The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) today rejected a request from the state of Florida for a waiver from the medical loss ratio rule created by the Affordable Care Act (ACA). This action prevents consumers from being robbed of $145 million in health insurance rebates due under the health care law. The Florida request was the largest to be decided so far by HHS. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners has estimated that families will recover rebates of up to $2 billion under the law.

On Oct. 26, Health Care for America Now (HCAN), the nation’s leading grassroots health care advocacy organization, submitted comments to HHS on the Florida application and asked for a public hearing on the matter. In its decision today, HHS said a hearing was unnecessary because of the analyses submitted by HCAN and other consumer groups.

HHS concluded that Florida officials failed to substantiate their claims that unless exceptions to the health care law were granted, consumers would be unable to access health insurance agents and brokers.

Here is a statement from HCAN Executive Director Ethan Rome on the HHS ruling on Florida’s waiver request:

“The administration sent a clear message to health insurance companies that their days of ripping off consumers are over. HHS also said that politically motivated, bogus requests by extremist governors to protect insurance company profits will not be tolerated. This decision highlights how much money families will save because of consumer protections in the health care law.

“While Republicans want to eliminate this rule and strip all the benefits of the ACA from America’s consumers, the Obama administration is putting $145 million back into consumers’ pockets. Just this morning, House Republicans held a hearing to publicize their false claims that the ACA is harming small businesses, when the truth is exactly the opposite.”

Health Care Jobs Heal Economy While Protecting Lives of Seniors and Families

Washington, D.C. - Protesters from across the country held a speak-out and rally today, calling for Congress to focus on creating jobs rather than proposing health care cuts that harm patients and eliminate jobs from our weak economy. The event was part of a week of actions in support of the "Take Back the Capitol" initiative. On Tuesday, underemployed workers and jobless people joined full-time health care workers in visiting members of Congress. The delegations demanded job security and no cuts to Medicaid and Medicare. Cutting spending on the nation's two main health care programs would result in immediate job losses in most states.

Nikki Brown-Booker, who has had a disability her entire life, traveled all the way from Berkeley, Calif., to recount how Medicaid has helped her personally while providing the opportunity for employment to others. Because of Medi-Cal, California's Medicaid program, she can hire home attendants to provide services she needs to remain independent and productive at home.

"Thanks to Medicaid, I was able to move out of my parents' house when I was 18, go to college, get a master's degree and become a productive, taxpaying member of the community - all while creating opportunities for others to also work," said Brown-Booker, a marriage and family therapist who works with parents and children who have disabilities.

The health care sector is the nation's biggest job creator, generating 20 percent of the country's new employment this year and accounting for 1 out of every 8 American jobs. Repeated proposals to slash health care programs like Medicaid and Medicare would cripple this engine for job growth and economic recovery and threaten the well-being of countless seniors, children, people with disabilities and working families.

"Instead of investing in jobs, Congress wants to invest in more tax breaks for the wealthy," said William McNary, President of USAction, the nation's largest network of state advocacy organizations and founding partner of Health Care for America Now. "We're not going to let that happen. Every dollar being wasted on tax giveaways to millionaires and billionaires should be spent instead on providing and preserving needed health care jobs. Every dollar wasted providing corporate loopholes should be spent on shoring up Medicaid and Medicare, not cutting them. Every dollar wasted on a bloated military budget should be spent providing high quality, affordable health care for all."

Speakers joined hundreds of workers in a march to K Street, where protesters confronted corporate CEOs and lobbyists for some of the country's largest companies, which have avoided paying their fair share of taxes for years. These executives have managed to remain part of the country's wealthiest 1% while the other 99% continue to struggle in the face of constant threats to their health care and their livelihoods.

CO-SPONSORS: AFSCME, Alliance for a Just Society, Campaign for Community Change, Caring Across Generations, Health Care for America Now, Jobs with Justice, National Domestic Workers Alliance, National People's Action, PICO Network, SEIU, USAction.

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"Insurance commissioners ignored the NAIC's own research findings and supported efforts to rob consumers of $1.2 billion in rebates. The resolution they passed today attempts to eviscerate one of the toughest consumer protections in the health care law, a provision based on the NAIC's own recommendations last year.

"The commissioners who supported this proposal are tone-deaf to the skyrocketing health premium costs of average Americans. Commissioners said that of the many thousands of messages they received from consumers, not a single one supported the resolution.

"This vote was a disgrace. Instead of voting on the facts, the insurance commissioners buckled under pressure from the health insurance brokers and agents who made claims that weren't supported by NAIC data.

"Members of Congress and HHS Secretary Sebelius should dismiss this anti-consumer action, which would weaken the law that holds insurance companies accountable and puts a check on bloated CEO pay and record insurance company profits."

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Health Care for America Now is the nation's leading grassroots health care advocacy organization. HCAN led the fight over the past two years to win passage of health reform and to keep Congress from being steamrolled by corporate special interests.

"The voices of the 99% are being heard on the Super Committee. The Democrats held the line on protecting Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, and they insisted that millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share in taxes. While the Republicans have wanted to make this about nothing but giving tax breaks to the 1%, the Democrats have made the fight about fundamental priorities, about siding with America's seniors, small businesses and working families rather than siding with the corporate special interests and super rich.

"This has been a fight about core values, about whether we want a country where people are left to fend for themselves or one where they can count on programs like Medicare to provide health security for America's seniors and peace of mind to their families.

"Because the Republicans wanted to give tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires more than they wanted a solution, the Super Committee turned out to be the dead end that many expected. Now it's time to move on and get to the business of putting people back to work."

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Health Care for America Now is the nation's leading grassroots health care advocacy organization. HCAN led the fight over the past two years to win passage of health reform and to keep Congress from being steamrolled by corporate special interests.

Washington, DC - Health Care for America Now (HCAN), the nation's leading grassroots health care advocacy organization, released the following statement from HCAN Executive Director Ethan Rome on the House vote scheduled for today on a "balanced budget" constitutional amendment proposal that would cripple the economy, put 15 million Americans out of work and doom Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security:

"Requiring a balanced budget every year without regard for the condition of the economy or important national needs would force deep cuts to vital programs like Medicaid and Medicare, and it would remake our country into a society where everyone is on their own.

"The Republican plan would put the gradual elimination of essential programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security into the Constitution. It would permanently protect millionaire tax breaks and corporate tax loopholes while destroying programs critical to middle class and low-income families. It would end the American Dream as we know it.

"Americans would earn less, the economy would shrink and access to decent health care would exist only for the wealthy. As one independent economic analysis found, the effect on the economy would be catastrophic.

"The Republican proposal not only discourages sound long-term investments in our future - it prohibits them. If the Republican proposal applied to household budgets, families would have to pay cash-in-full for their homes or their kid's college education instead of taking loans to fund the investment. The Republican proposal is designed for a 1% world, not for the rest of us.

"The balanced budget amendment may have an appealing title, but it masks what it would really do."

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Health Care for America Now is the nation's leading grassroots health care advocacy organization. HCAN led the fight over the past two years to win passage of health reform and to keep Congress from being steamrolled by corporate special interests.

Washington, D.C. - Frustrated constituents from across the country spent this morning urging lawmakers to "wake up" and protect Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security from cuts being discussed in the waning days of the Super Committee negotiations.

Seniors, people with disabilities and workers started the day early by waking up Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), a member of the Senate minority leadership, in "alarming" fashion at Bistro Bis, a local restaurant. Carrying gold alarm clocks and signs, angry protesters shut down a breakfast fundraiser for Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT). Senator Kyl, the keynote speaker, hurried out as protesters entered the restaurant and chanted, "It's a new morning, it's a new day; Wake up Congress and make the 1% pay." Protesters followed Sen. Kyl to his vehicle and demanded to know if the Senator plans to protect the 99% of people who depend on these critical services or the richest 1% of Americans who don't want to pay their fair share of taxes.

To see video of 99% activists shutting down the fancy fundraiser for Sen. Hatch hosted by big health care corporations, click here.

Ferrol Wegner, 84, a member of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, traveled to Washington all the way from Des Moines to find out why Sen. Kyl is so alert when he's listening to the wealthiest 1% of Americans but his attention drifts away when the subject is the concerns of average people. "We want him to listen to the 99%, not just the 1% who can afford to come to these fundraisers," Wegner said. "We expect members of the Super Committee to act in the best interests of the majority-people like me who depend on Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security every day-instead of the richest 1% who only care about protecting their wealth."

Protesters then joined a larger crowd outside the restaurant and marched to the Dirksen Senate Office Building for a rally with Senators Ben Cardin (D-MD), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT). The senators, joined by Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), urged their colleagues on the 12-member Super Committee to reject cutbacks to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Seniors, faith leaders and people with disabilities from Massachusetts, Montana, Ohio, New Jersey, Iowa, Illinois and other states recounted personal stories about the devastation they would suffer if the bipartisan Super Committee slashes Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.

The 12-member Super Committee is considering cutbacks for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as it approaches a Nov. 23 deadline for a deficit reduction plan. Cuts in those programs would irreparably harm seniors, workers, people with disabilities and America's middle-class and low-income families. At the same time it is contemplating various cuts, the Super Committee members continue to dismiss demands from the public that the deal accomplish its deficit-reduction goal by raising taxes on wealthy corporations and individuals instead of just cutting benefits from people who receive benefits from Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.

Dr. Jessica Eng, a physician from Boston Medical Center, the largest safety-net health care provider in New England, described how the proposed cuts would harm her patients and the health of millions of others across Massachusetts and the nation. Dr. Eng echoed the message that no Super Committee deal is better than a deal that cuts Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.

Following the Senate rally, participants fanned out to visit the offices of Super Committee members and deliver the alarm clocks that should wake them up to reject any budget plan that cuts Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security for the 99% while protecting the richest 1%.

"Some Super Committee members are drawing a line in the sand, with the 1% on one side of it and the rest of America on the other," said Ethan Rome, executive director of Health Care for America Now. "Lawmakers should stay strong for Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security and demand that the super-rich and big corporations pay their fair share in taxes. No deal is better than a bad deal."

CO-SPONSORS: AFL-CIO, AFSCME, Alliance for a Just Society, Alliance For Retired Americans, Campaign for America's Future, Campaign for Community Change, Caring Across Generations, Health Care for America Now, International Longshore And Warehouse Union, National Committee To Preserve Social Security and Medicare, National Domestic Workers Alliance, National Nurses United, National People's Action, PICO Network, SEIU, Social Security Works and Strengthen Social Security Campaign.

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Health Care for America Now is the nation's leading grassroots health care advocacy organization. HCAN led the fight over the past two years to win passage of health reform and to keep Congress from being steamrolled by corporate special interests.

]]> http://blog.healthcareforamericanow.org/2011/11/17/frustrated-citizens-urge-super-committee-to-wake-up-focus-on-jobs-not-cuts-to-medicaid-medicare-or-social-security/feed/ http://blog.healthcareforamericanow.org/2011/11/10/hcan-calls-for-justice-clarence-thomas-to-recuse-himself-from-health-care-case/ http://blog.healthcareforamericanow.org/2011/11/10/hcan-calls-for-justice-clarence-thomas-to-recuse-himself-from-health-care-case/#comments Thu, 10 Nov 2011 20:29:01 +0000 Melinda Gibson http://blog.healthcareforamericanow.org/?p=5875 For Immediate Release
NOVEMBER 10, 2011
Contact: Avram Goldstein 202-587-1634
agoldstein@healthcareforamericanow.org

Numerous Conflicts of Interest Make It Impossible for Thomas to Render Fair, Impartial Decision on Affordable Care Act

Washington, DC - U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas has significant conflicts of interest that make it impossible for him to render a fair, impartial decision in the health care case being reviewed today by the Court, according to Health Care for America Now (HCAN), the nation's largest grassroots health care advocacy organization.

"Justice Thomas has so many conflicts of interest he should recuse himself," said HCAN Executive Director Ethan Rome. "Political groups determined to repeal or overturn the Affordable Care Act have been filling his family bank account for years. His wife Virginia has been a crusader in the campaign to defeat the law. She has raised money and taken money from organized efforts to kill health reform.

"At the same time, Justice Thomas personally has aligned himself with political activists and organizations dedicated to thwarting the law. He spoke at a secret conclave run by the billionaire Koch Brothers to raise funds for organizations like Americans for Prosperity. There is simply no way that Justice Thomas can render a fair decision in this important case."

Justice Thomas failed to disclose until January that his wife received income of nearly $690,000 between 2003 and 2006 from the Heritage Foundation, a leading proponent of overturning the Affordable Care Act.

Seventy-four members of the House of Representatives have taken the highly unusual step of requesting that Justice Thomas remove himself from participation in deliberations on the Affordable Care Act. If Justice Thomas fails to recuse himself, it will threaten the integrity of the entire Supreme Court.

A conservative group has issued a call for Supreme Court Associate Justice Elena Kagan to recuse herself from the same case. "This is part of a politically motivated and baseless attack designed to divert the public's focus away from the substantive and compelling evidence of Justice Thomas's conflicts of interest," Rome said.

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Health Care for America Now is the nation's leading grassroots health care advocacy organization. HCAN led the fight over the past two years to win passage of health reform and to keep Congress from being steamrolled by corporate special interests.

]]> http://blog.healthcareforamericanow.org/2011/11/10/hcan-calls-for-justice-clarence-thomas-to-recuse-himself-from-health-care-case/feed/ http://blog.healthcareforamericanow.org/2011/11/08/thanks-for-making-the-occupy-the-koch-brothers-guerrilla-drive-in-a-huge-success/ http://blog.healthcareforamericanow.org/2011/11/08/thanks-for-making-the-occupy-the-koch-brothers-guerrilla-drive-in-a-huge-success/#comments Tue, 08 Nov 2011 19:56:51 +0000 Melinda Gibson http://blog.healthcareforamericanow.org/?p=5870 This post has been updated with videos and a photo from Friday's event.

Here is a great video of the event from the Other 98%.

This is a video of the march: Occupy the Kochs - Guerrilla Drive-In

From Velvet Revolution: Koch Brothers Guerrilla Drive-In Protest at Wash Convention Center

This photo was taken by Common Cause. You can view more of their photos from the event here.

Thanks for Making the Occupy the Koch Brothers Guerrilla Drive-In a Huge Success!

Thank you to the 1,000 people who turned out Friday night, November 4, 2011, for the "Occupy the Kochs Guerrilla Drive-In" at the Washington Convention Center. Health Care for America Now and the advocacy group The Other 98% led the protest of the billionaire Kochs Brothers' front group, Americans for Prosperity, which hosted a gala dinner that night as part of a two-day conference featuring speeches by GOP presidential candidates Herman Cain and Mitt Romney.

Numerous progressive organizations teamed up with HCAN and the Other 98% to protest the Koch Brothers' corruption of the American political system at the unusual outdoor film festival. Americans for Prosperity, which spends millions advancing its extremist right-wing political agenda with the financial support of billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch and their companies, held the "Defend the American Dream" event to celebrate efforts to protect the richest people and corporations from paying their fair share in taxes and to eliminate important programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Protesters gathered at the Guerrilla Drive-In to enjoy popcorn, good food and political satire videos highlighting the Kochs' efforts to destroy the American Dream, shrink the middle class, increase America's growing income inequality, preserve tax breaks for special interests like Big Oil and strip workers of their rights. They sang satirical songs and marched around the massive Convention Center complex.

The protest showed that Americans are not going to accept a corporate takeover of our country. The event we started drew hundreds of Occupy DC and Occupy K Street people who joined in with our action. Later, those activists staged actions of their own around the hall.

"The Kochs and their front groups are trying to steal our democracy to make the 1% even richer," said HCAN Executive Director Ethan Rome. "They and their cronies have purchased the Republican Party to destroy America's middle class, including taking away health care and stripping workers of the right to bargain for a better life. Across the country people are raising their voices in protest because they're fed up with a system stacked in favor of the richest 1%."

"The Koch brothers are not just the 1% — they are the .00001%," said John Sellers, co-founder of The Other 98%, which co-produced the Drive-In with HCAN. "They are the poster children for the hostile corporate takeover of our democracy, and it's about time they heard from the rest of us."

Occupy the Kochs comes as progressives across the country have been speaking out to put Americans back to work, tax the 1% and pressure the Super Committee not to make a bad deal for the 99%. For more than a month, Americans of all ages and backgrounds have been on the streets expressing their rejection of corporate money in politics at Occupy events and other movement protests across the U.S., and Occupy the Kochs demonstrates that the momentum for change is building.

Here are the progressive groups that joined up with HCAN and the Other 98% to stage the Guerrilla Drive-In: Campaign for America's Future, Campaign for Community Change, Common Cause, Justice Through Music, Oil Change International, Public Campaign, Public Citizen, Rebuild the Dream, Tar Sands Action, True Majority, USAction, and Velvet Revolution.

‘Occupy the Kochs Guerrilla Drive-In' Plays in DC After Cain, Romney Kiss the Kochs' Rings at Americans for Prosperity Meeting

Washington, DC - Health Care for America Now (HCAN), the advocacy group The Other 98% and numerous progressive organizations (see list below) teamed up today to protest the billionaire Koch Brothers' corruption of the American political system at an unusual outdoor film festival in the nation's capital. The "Occupy the Kochs Guerrilla Drive-In" runs tonight at the Washington Convention Center, where the Kochs' front group, Americans for Prosperity, is hosting a gala dinner as part of a two-day conference featuring speeches by GOP presidential candidates Herman Cain and Mitt Romney.

Americans for Prosperity, which spends millions advancing its right-wing political agenda with the financial support of billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch and their companies, is holding the "Defend the American Dream" event to celebrate efforts to protect the richest people and corporations from paying their fair share in taxes and to eliminate important programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
Protesters will gather at the Guerrilla Drive-In to enjoy popcorn, good food and political satire videos highlighting the Kochs' efforts to destroy the American Dream, shrink the middle class, increase America's growing income inequality, preserve tax breaks for special interests like Big Oil and strip workers of their rights. Several co-sponsors of Occupy the Kochs said the protest tonight shows that Americans are not going to accept a corporate takeover of our country.

"The Kochs and their front groups are trying to steal our democracy to make the 1% even richer," said HCAN Executive Director Ethan Rome. "They and their cronies have purchased the Republican Party to destroy America's middle class, including taking away health care and stripping workers of the right to bargain for a better life. Across the country people are raising their voices in protest because they're fed up with a system stacked in favor of the richest 1%."

"The Koch brothers are not just the 1% — they are the .00001%," said John Sellers, co-founder of The Other 98%. "They are the poster children for the hostile corporate takeover of our democracy, and it's about time they heard from the rest of us."

"The Koch brothers are trying to create an America that works better for millionaires and billionaires and worse for the rest of us," said Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America's Future. "Their American Dream is an American nightmare of continued income inequality with little or no government to protect the people."

"The Koch brothers' idea of a working democracy is one that works for them and their bottom line, not for everyday Americans," said Nick Nyhart, president and CEO of Public Campaign. "They should have no more say over what Congress does than any of the rest of us."

"We're Occupying the Kochs tonight because Americans are angry about the corporate takeover of our democracy," said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen. "Democracy is rule by the people, not rule by corporations. There's no role for the global warming-denying Koch Brothers in our electoral politics, or for other giant corporations. We need major campaign finance reforms, including a constitutional amendment to reverse Citizens United v. FEC, to reclaim our democracy."

Occupy the Kochs comes as progressives across the country have been speaking out to put Americans back to work, tax the 1% and pressure the Super Committee not to make a bad deal for the 99%. For more than a month, Americans of all ages and backgrounds have been on the streets expressing their rejection of corporate money in politics at Occupy events and other movement protests across the U.S., and Occupy the Kochs demonstrates that the momentum for change is building.

WHAT: Occupy the Kochs Guerrilla Drive-In at the gala dinner of the Koch Brothers' front group, Americans for Prosperity

WHERE: 1025 Seventh Street NW (corner of L Street), 1 block south of Mt. Vernon/Convention Center Metro station

WHEN: Friday, November 4, from 6:00 to 8:15 p.m. (Media should arrive by 6:45 p.m.)

SPONSORING ORGANIZATIONS: Campaign for America's Future, Campaign for Community Change, Common Cause, Health Care for America Now, Justice Through Music, Oil Change International, The Other 98%, Public Campaign, Public Citizen, Rebuild the Dream, Tar Sands Action, True Majority, USAction, and Velvet Revolution. They will be joined by hundreds of people opposed to health insurers, Big Oil and Wall Street taking over our political process and destroying the middle class.

For more information, click here.

To follow the event on Twitter, go to #OccupyTheKochs. You can also text @GuerrillaTeamDC to 23559.

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Americans for Prosperity, the right-wing advocacy tool of the infamous Koch Brothers, is hosting a national conference Friday and Saturday cynically called, "Defending the American Dream." Featured speakers include Herman Cain, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani. They've got workshops on topics like killing collective bargaining and repealing health care reform.

Health Care for America Now and the advocacy group The Other 98%, along with several other organizations, are sponsoring a counter-protest Friday night to expose the corrosive role of corporate money in politics and the dangerous agenda of organizations like Americans for Prosperity (AFP) that want to keep the richest people and corporations from paying their fair share in taxes and to eliminate important programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. (Click here and here for event information).

Charles and David Koch are the biggest players in extremist Republican politics. They've personally contributed more than $85 million to right-wing causes over the last 15 years. They convene regular meetings of super-rich people and organize them to contribute large sums to their campaign to destroy the American Dream, shrink the middle class, increase America's growing income inequality, preserve tax breaks for special interests like Big Oil, and strip workers of their rights. They'll do anything, no matter how harmful it may be to our country, to advance the interests of big corporations and the 1%.

In August of 2009 the drive for health care reform was almost derailed as the tea party disrupted one congressional town hall after another, dominating the news with anti-government Obama-haters spouting falsehoods about death panels. Most of the "grassroots activity" was astroturfing, powered by right-wing groups in Washington, D.C. and funded by the Kochs, who were dubbed the "financial engine of the tea party" by none other than Mitt Romney.

For those of us fighting for health care reform, the forces against us in those town halls almost stopped our campaign in its tracks. But something even more dramatic was taking shape. The so-called tea party movement was gaining steam, and it was getting help, direction and amplification from a variety of organizations that represent and are funded by corporate lobbyists, not real people. It was a movement conceived and driven by a Republican issue advocacy machine, and the Kochs' fingerprints were all over it. Then things got even worse in 2010 thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court's destructive Citizens United decision, which gave a major boost to the Kochs' rapidly expanding political empire.

AFP is the Koch Brothers front group at the center of all this. Along with FreedomWorks and other organizations backed by the Kochs and their allies, AFP is dedicated to stopping progressive change everywhere they can and rolling back the clock on every important social and economic justice achievement in our country.

The Kochs and their front groups are trying to steal our democracy. They and their cronies have purchased the Republican Party to serve their agenda of destroying America's middle class, including crushing workers and their unions.

Back in February, Americans for Prosperity sent busloads of people to Madison, Wisconsin, to support Gov. Scott Walker's attempt to decimate Wisconsin's public service unions and the middle class they helped build, while more than 100,000 people rallied for their rights.

Right now in Ohio, the Kochs, AFP, Republicans like Karl Rove and a host of fanatical right-wing organizations are doing everything they can to block an effort by the 99% to repeal the new state law that strips public employees of the right to bargain for stronger and safer communities and a better life for their families.

All across the country people are raising their voices in protest because they're fed up with a system stacked in favor of the richest 1%.

Progressives are on offense right now. Let's keep that going.

For more information about Occupy the Kochs, click here. Follow news about the event on Twitter at #OccupytheKochs.

For NOVEMBER 4, 2011
Contact: Avram Goldstein 202-587-1634
agoldstein@healthcareforamericanow.org

‘Occupy the Kochs Guerrilla Drive-In' Set for Nov. 4 in Washington, D.C.

Washington, DC - Health Care for America Now (HCAN), the advocacy group The Other 98% and numerous progressive organizations (see list below) are teaming up to expose the billionaire Koch Brothers' corruption of the American political system on Friday, Nov. 4, at an unusual outdoor film festival in the nation's capital. The "Occupy the Kochs Guerrilla Drive-In" will take place at the Washington Convention Center, where the Kochs' front group, Americans for Prosperity, is hosting a gala dinner. The extremist organization, which spends millions advancing its right-wing political agenda, is holding the "Defend the American Dream" event to celebrate efforts to protect the richest people and corporations from paying their fair share in taxes and to eliminate important programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Protesters will gather by the hundreds at the Guerrilla Drive-In to enjoy popcorn, good food and political satire videos highlighting the Kochs' efforts to destroy the American Dream, shrink the middle class, increase America's growing income inequality, preserve tax breaks for Big Oil and eliminate workers' rights to bargain for a better life and better public services.

Occupy the Kochs comes as progressives across the country have been speaking out to put Americans back to work, tax the 1% and pressure the Super Committee not to make a bad deal for the 99%. For more than a month, Americans of all ages and backgrounds have been on the streets expressing their rejection of corporate money in politics at the Occupy events and other movement protests across the U.S., and that momentum is building. This week in Washington, the Occupy K Street protest continues, National Nurses United is demonstrating at the White House and on Capitol Hill to demand that Wall Street banks pay their fair share in taxes, MoveOn is holding Make Wall Street Pay events in Washington and around the country, and Tar Sands Action plans to form a human circle around the White House on Nov. 6 to ask President Obama to reject the Keystone XL pipeline.

WHAT: Occupy the Kochs Guerrilla Drive-In at the gala dinner of the Koch Brothers' front group, Americans for Prosperity

WHERE: 1025 Seventh Street NW (corner of L Street), 1 block south of Mt. Vernon/Convention Center Metro station

WHEN: Friday, November 4, from 6:00 to 8:15 p.m. (Media should arrive by 6:45 p.m.)

SPONSORING ORGANIZATIONS: Campaign for America's Future, Campaign for Community Change, Common Cause, Health Care for America Now, Justice Through Music, Oil Change International, The Other 98%, Public Campaign, Public Citizen, Rebuild the Dream, Tar Sands Action, True Majority, USAction, and Velvet Revolution. They will be joined by hundreds of people opposed to health insurers, Big Oil and Wall Street taking over our political process and destroying the middle class.

For more information, click here.

To follow the event on Twitter, go to #OccupyTheKochs.

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"It's outrageous that health insurance companies would threaten to pass along to ratepayers a tax that should be paid by the company's Wall Street investors, especially when insurers are making record profits. At a time when Americans are struggling to make ends meet, this threat is the kind of reprehensible behavior from big corporations that has driven Americans into the streets in protest.

"The new tax was meant to capture some of the insurers' excessive profits to benefit the public, not get passed on to consumers by CEOs who make more money in a few hours than many people make in a year. Health insurance CEOs have collected more than $1 billion in personal compensation in the last decade while the majority of Americans are barely getting by.

"The health insurance companies' relentless pursuit of profit and disregard for people offers another window into how big corporations have abused people and twisted the economy to serve their own interests. The public won't stand for this just as Bank of America customers were unwilling to accept unjustified debit-card fees. No actuary or report can make this look like anything other than unbridled greed."

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Health Care for America Now is the nation's leading grassroots health care advocacy organization. HCAN led the fight over the past two years to win passage of health reform and to keep Congress from being steamrolled by corporate special interests.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott wants to cheat the families of his state out of $140 million in health insurance rebates. If Scott gets his way, it could harm consumers across the country.

Ripping off consumers and the health care system isn't new to Florida Gov. Rick Scott. He got rich leading a hospital company that paid a record $1.7 billion in criminal fines and civil penalties to the Justice Department for systematically defrauding federal health care programs. Scott went on to lead a high-profile campaign against health reform backed by the infamous right-wing billionaire Koch Brothers, and Scott used that campaign as a springboard to the governorship.

Now Scott wants his state to be exempted from federal rules that would require insurance companies to send $140 million in premium rebates to families over the next three years. Enter the big winners, the health insurance companies that will get the money instead of Florida's hard-working families.

Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) enacted last year, health insurers that fail to spend at least 80% of your premiums on actual health services must give the difference back to consumers. This is one of the best and possibly least known provisions in health care reform. It requires insurance companies to become more efficient and keep less money for profits and CEO salaries. It says that people paying premiums should get more value for their money.

The goal of the rule isn't to force companies to pay consumer rebates, it's to hold insurance companies accountable and get them to change their behavior. But if they don't, they're supposed to pay, and they shouldn't get off the hook just because they like their profits more than the new law. They should not be rewarded for failing to meet a basic standard because they can get politicians like Scott to take their side.

And let's not forget the most important thing: While insurance companies are making record profits, struggling families are desperate for relief. The people of Florida need the $140 million they're owed. But consumers won't get their money if Rick Scott gets his way. The Republican governor — who's been doing everything in his power to thwart implementation of the ACA — has been shamelessly trying to manipulate the law to pad the pockets of a private health insurance industry that will collect $934 billion in premiums this year.

Florida Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty is doing Scott's dirty work. McCarty is a staunch opponent of the ACA who recently led an unsuccessful effort to gut the 80% rule at the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. For his efforts, the National Association of Health Underwriters honored McCarty with the "Spirit of Independence Award." So the insurance industry can count on the insurance commissioner.

McCarty recently asked the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to give Florida's insurance companies special treatment. In order to get an exemption to the 80% rule, a state is supposed to meet some basic criteria, principally proving that its insurance market would be destabilized by the rule.

Florida doesn't meet any of the criteria, and its application to HHS fails to provide any supporting evidence. As Health Care for America Now (HCAN) detailed in a letter to HHS, the state offered no evidence that insurers would leave the state market, that consumers would have to do without the services of agents and brokers, or that anyone would go without coverage due to the rule. That's why HCAN asked HHS to reject Florida's request. Other national groups and 19 Florida health care and consumer organizations have done the same.

HCAN also asked HHS to hold a public hearing. Such a hearing would be the first of its kind — and the first opportunity for Florida's consumers to have any input on their state government's attempt to rob them of $140 million. It would also force the insurance companies seeking this special treatment to publicly face the consumers who will lose the millions of dollars they're entitled to under the ACA.

The Patient Bill of Rights in the ACA is about stopping insurance company abuses, and the 80% rule is an important part of it.

If Florida can get an unjustified exemption to this rule, it would send the message that anything goes, that the rule doesn't really matter and that insurance companies and the Republican politicians they own are in charge. We're counting on HHS and the Obama Administration to do the right thing and deny Florida's bogus request.

For Immediate Release - OCTOBER 27, 2011
Contact: Avram Goldstein 202-587-1634
agoldstein@healthcareforamericanow.org

Washington, DC - Health Care for America Now (HCAN), the nation's leading grassroots health care advocacy organization, has asked the Department of Health and Human Services to hold a public hearing on the state of Florida's request to be exempted from rules that would require insurance companies to send $140 million in premium rebates to families. Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), health insurers that fail to spend at least 80% of premium revenue on actual health services must give back the difference to consumers. Florida's submission to HHS failed to provide any evidence that the MLR would destabilize the health insurance market and does not warrant a special exception from HHS.

"At a time when insurance companies are making record profits and families are struggling to make ends meet, taking away rebates from consumers is unjustified and unconscionable," said Ethan Rome, HCAN's executive director. "The state offers no justification for its proposal to undercut this pro-consumer regulation. If the state of Florida gets its way, consumers will lose $140 million in rebates and insurance companies will get that money instead."

Other states have asked HHS to let their health insurers spend more than the maximum 20% of their premium revenue on profits, CEO pay, marketing, lobbying and administration. But Florida stands alone in seeking an adjustment on such a massive scale. HCAN believes that an open hearing as permitted by recently adopted HHS regulations would serve the public interest and expose the substantial flaws in Florida's request. If approved, the hearing would be the first of its kind.

According to HCAN's letter to the Department, the state offered no evidence that insurers would leave the state market, that consumers would have to do without the services of agents and brokers, or that anyone would go without coverage due to the rule.

Florida's request emerged from a highly charged political environment. Prior to his election, Florida Governor Rick Scott led an industry-backed campaign against passage of the ACA, and the governor has since refused to implement various provisions of the law. Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty has consistently been opposed to a meaningful rule on how much insurers must spend on actual health care. He led an effort to weaken the pro-consumer rule at the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

Governor Scott made his personal fortune at the helm of a hospital company that systematically defrauded federal health care programs. The company pleaded guilty to 14 federal felonies and was forced to pay a record $1.7 billion in criminal fines and civil penalties to the Justice Department. In 2009, with financial help from right-wing billionaires Charles and David Koch, Scott used his high-profile opposition to health reform legislation as a springboard to the governorship.

The insurance commissioner has been working for more than a year to deny these rebates to consumers, beginning in September 2010 with a sham hearing that he submitted to HHS as evidence supporting the Florida request. This state hearing was an invitation-only showcase for insurers and brokers to attack the rule, and consumers were denied the right to testify on the record.

"Florida's insurance commissioner should be using this law is to lower premium increases, not to gouge consumers," Rome said. "The goal is to lower premiums not reward companies that can't compete. The governor and the commissioner should spend less time opposing the law and more time implementing it so consumers get premium relief."

To read HCAN's letter to Secretary Sebelius, click here.

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Health Care for America Now is the nation's leading grassroots health care advocacy organization. HCAN led the fight over the past two years to win passage of health reform and to keep Congress from being steamrolled by corporate special interests.

By Ethan Rome - Executive Director, Health Care for America Now

At an Occupy Wall Street event in Minneapolis, last weekend protesters held up a sign that asked, "Had Enough?" A simple question. An expression of outrage. People are rightly and righteously angry, but they're also scared and worried about the future. That's why these protests across the country are supported by the majority of Americans. These are uncertain times and the system has failed them.

Some media and political pundits don't seem to get what the demonstrators are saying, but America's working and middle-class families do: People want their country back. People want to reclaim America before it becomes the unrecognizable property of the super-rich and the big corporations that see our country merely as a source of labor and natural resources to exploit for their gain.

People want jobs, homes, health care and a future. That's why they're fighting back in Minneapolis and cities across the nation. We see this spirit at the Occupy protests and in other struggles, especially in a number of state battles.

Many of us toss around the phrase "American Dream" so much that there's a risk it will lose meaning. For the protesters and the increasing number of folks in "middle America" who support them, the American Dream is real, and it represents one thing above all others - opportunity. While Wall Street sharpshooters wrecked our economy and took away peoples' homes, jobs and so much more, they also took away the future. And the Wall Street profiteers are making the present pretty rotten too.

Beneath the rhetoric about unbridled corporate greed and the grotesque income inequality ruining our country, there is a basic and understandable fear. People of all ages are terrified about finding jobs, affording a home and planning their lives. As it gets harder to afford college, it's becoming less clear what a college education gets you. In America that's a game changer. Getting an education is supposed to mean something, and all of us are supposed to do better than our parents did. That's the core aspiration of the American Dream.

Meanwhile, savings and pensions are turning into artifacts. We can't afford to save, and the jobs we do get don't have pensions. At the same time programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are under relentless attack by right-wing Republicans who answer to their special-interest corporate campaign contributors instead of their constituents back home.

We're at a moment in our history where any detailed list of policy prescriptions understates the kind of change we need. So the chattering class should stop asking the Occupy movement for a 200-point plan. America's middle class and the working poor are under assault by big corporations and the top 1 percent, and the moneyed interests are dangerously close to winning. These attacks are the real deal, and stopping them is what the protesters are talking about. We are all in different parts of the same boat, struggling today and worried about what's next. For people in their 20s, 30s and 40s, books, college degrees and great resumes won't be enough if the big corporations and the 1 percent own everything. That's the agenda - taking back our country for everyone in the 99 percent while we are still hanging on.

The 1 percent and the Republican politicians they own are chipping away at the foundation of one of the greatest inventions we've ever had in this country besides political freedom - the middle class. And led by billionaires like the Koch Brothers, extremists on the right are working to undermine our political democracy as well.

That's why the Occupy protests are so inspiring. Their message is as much what they are doing as what they're saying, and they are making it crystal clear that they've had enough. Activists from established groups on the left should look for ways to support Occupy efforts on the terms of the protesters, from turning out supporters for events to providing cash and supplies.

Of course, progressive organizations already have plenty to do. For example, people in Wisconsin have just launched a recall effort against anti-middle class, pro-corporate Gov. Scott Walker. They want their state back. Those of us involved in the budget debate in Washington, D.C., are following a so-called "super committee" that must protect low-income and middle-class programs like Medicare and Medicaid and ask the 1 percent to pay their fair share instead of perpetuating the status quo. That's not easy in a town dominated by corporate interests that care more about their bottom lines than anything else.

When it comes to state battles, one of the biggest and most important is in Ohio. Hundreds of thousands of teachers, corrections officers, firefighters, nurses, administrative assistants, sanitation workers, social workers and so many others hit the streets to gather petition signatures to repeal Ohio Senate Bill 5. This anti-democratic, anti-middle class legislation takes away the right of workers to bargain for a better life and for jobs, better services and stronger communities for everyone.

We can't have a middle class, a vibrant democracy and a just society without strong unions and a growing labor movement. And we can't have the country that we all deserve without putting people before corporate domination, a demand at the heart of the Occupy movement.

Below are few of the reasons that this waiver is a bad deal for Indiana's consumers:

• Indiana has offered no evidence that any insurers have exited the state or will exit the state or cease offering coverage absent an adjustment.
• Indiana has offered no evidence that, absent an adjustment, enrollees will lose coverage due to insurers leaving the state.
• Indiana has not demonstrated that access to agents and brokers will be disrupted if an adjustment is not granted.
• Alternative coverage is available to Indiana insurance consumers if an insurer exits the state.
• If granted, this adjustment request would cause a substantial loss to Indiana consumers.

Today, the U.S. House of Representatives will vote on H.R. 358, a dangerous anti-women's health bill that undermines access to care.  It is no surprise that House Republicans would rather play politics with women's health than focus on jobs and the economy.

Call your Member of Congress today toll free - (877) 264-HCAN (4226) and tell them to vote NO on H.R. 358.

Here is the letter HCAN signed along with over 50 other organizations vehemently opposing this bill.

Below are some important facts from National Women's Law Center on this issue. You can download the full fact sheet here.

H.R. 358, authored by Representative Joe Pitts (R-PA), threatens women's ability to purchase health insurance that includes abortion coverage and creates dangerous new rules that will harm women's health-and even risk women's lives.

• H.R. 358 would virtually prohibit health plans in the new health insurance exchanges from covering abortion services, even though most health insurance covers it today.
• The bill exempts hospitals from treating women in need of emergency abortion care, even if they will die without it.
• H.R. 358 allows states to exempt health insurance plans from complying with any obligation under the new health law if it offends the insurer's "conscience." For example, an insurer could refuse to cover contraception, the HPV vaccine or any other service.

Here are some messages and talking points from Planned Parenthood on H.R. 358:

• This legislation represents yet another attempt by some Republican leaders to force consideration of policies that would drastically erode women's health and reduce access to basic health care services and information.
• This bill would take comprehensive health coverage away from women, eliminate existing legal protections for women who need an abortion to save their lives, expand current refusal laws that undermine women's health, and create loopholes that states and insurance companies could exploit to undermine the requirement that insurance companies provide birth control with no co-pays.
• Most devastating, the bill eliminates protections for patients seeking care in emergency circumstances and would allow a hospital to deny lifesaving abortion care to a woman, even if a doctor deems it necessary.
• Any politician who votes for this bill is literally putting politics before women's health.
• This is the latest example that Republican leaders prioritize putting politics before women's health, and just can't keep their eyes on the ball when it comes to jobs and the economy.

America's families and small businesses are barely hanging on while the Wall Street-run health insurance profit machines have been jacking up rates and providing less care. That's why it makes sense for Occupy Wall Street protesters to occupy them as well.

In an excellent post on Monday, former health insurance industry insider Wendell Potter suggested that protesters target the Washington, D.C., offices of the insurance industry's lobbying arm. He's right. People should also demonstrate at the corporate offices of the biggest Wall Street-run companies: Aetna and Cigna in Hartford, Conn., WellPoint in Indianapolis, Humana in Louisville and UnitedHealth in Minneapolis.

Much has been said about the banks and credit card companies that are headquartered on Wall Street. The health insurance companies' relentless pursuit of profit and callous disregard for people offers another window into how big corporations have abused people and twisted the economy to serve their own interests.

Health insurance companies make excessive profits, hoard massive amounts of cash, overcharge their customers and give their top executives obscene paychecks.

While we've been dealing with the crushing impact of the worst recession since the Great Depression, the top five health insurance companies have been celebrating boom years thanks to record profits that are expected to total $14 billion in 2011, an astonishing 80% increase since 2008. They did it by raising rates 131% since 1999.

After the insurers gouge us and line their CEOs' pockets, they hoard billions of dollars. As of Dec. 31, 2010, the nation's for-profit and nonprofit health insurance companies were holding $97.3 billion to cover unexpected medical claims - six times more than state regulators require, according to Citigroup Global Markets.

Not surprisingly, insurance company CEOs and executives have been compensated at obscene levels for producing such enormous profits for Wall Street. The chief executives of America's 10 largest health insurance companies were paid $228 million in 2009, up from $33 million in 2000. In that 10-year period, health insurance CEOs received nearly $1 billion in total compensation, and that doesn't even count hundreds of millions more in unreported exercises of stock options during that period. We've got 9% unemployment, falling wages and a declining standard of living, and these guys are taking raises that stagger the imagination.

Meanwhile, millions of Americans are uninsured, and millions more have inadequate coverage. The Affordable Care Act is changing things for the better, but full implementation can't come soon enough. That's why so many of the Occupy Wall Street protesters say health care is a major issue for them. Many don't have insurance, and they're worried they never will. And while Wall Street and the big corporations are wreaking havoc on the country, Republicans in Congress are doing everything they can to make things worse by trying to repeal consumer-friendly reforms like the health care law and bank regulation and trying to eliminate middle-class programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

At the core of the hundreds of Occupy Wall Street protests across the country is anger over the simple fact that the wealthiest 1% and the corporations they own are getting even richer while the rest of us - the 99% who built this country and make it work - are getting poorer. Our perverse economy has produced such extreme income inequality that it is destroying the very essence of America.

The right-wing Republican extremists who work for the 1% like the Koch Brothers think it's the protesters who are destroying America. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor calls the protestors "growing mobs." GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain, who is not burdened by Cantor's restraint, calls the Wall Street demonstrators "un-American."

Some in the media complain that they can't figure out what the protesters want. It seems pretty obvious to me. They want jobs and health care and homes. They want an end to unbridled corporate greed. They want the opportunity to realize their full potential in the greatest country on earth. And they want their political leaders to stand up for them, not the 1%. That's why they started this movement on Wall Street, the financial capital of the world, and that's why the politicians should support the protesters instead of calling them names.

Here are two things you can do to support the movement against corporate greed:

• To find an Occupy event near you, go to the website Occupy Together.
  
• Join The Other 98 Percent and Health Care for America Now in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 4 to protest a fancy gala dinner being held by a Koch Brothers front group. The "American Dream Guerrilla Drive-In" counter-event starts at 8 p.m.

Below is a great piece on this issue by Rick Unger for Mother Jones:

GOP Congressman Equates Purchasing Health Insurance To Buying An Expensive Vacation Home

-By Rick Ungar | Thu Oct. 6, 2011 10:22 AM PDT

Just when you thought it could not get more ridiculous, GOP Congressman and Chairman of the House Appropriations Labor-Health and Human Services subcommittee, Denny Rehberg, has come up with a novel idea. He wants the Congressional super committee to solve $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction by simply killing off the expansion of Medicaid and the subsidies that will open the door to health care for millions of Americans.

In making his argument, Rehberg noted that expanding the Medicaid safety net program, and providing subsidies to low and middle class workers, is akin to the "expensive vacation home" that the average American would choose not to buy if that American was facing a deficit as serious as the nation's.

Before getting to the heart of Rehberg's suggestion, one can't help but wonder what makes the Congressman think that the "average" American can afford an expensive vacation home (or any vacation home for that matter) on what the average American earns, even if that American is not in debt?

But should we be surprised by the Congressman's view of the world? This is the same Denny Rehberg who is not only listed as number 23 on the list of the wealthiest members of Congress, but is the same Congressman Rehberg who had no idea what the minimum wage was in his own state (check out this video as it is priceless.)

Of course, far more important is Rehberg's inability to grasp that getting treatment for cancer or unblocking that clogged artery that is going to make someone a widow or widower is not quite the same as purchasing a vacation home-expensive or otherwise.

And while life might not be worth living for Rep. Rehberg and friends without that idyllic home on the lake, the average American would still prefer to remain alive, thank you very much, which is precisely why Medicaid coverage was extended to more people and subsidies are to be made available to the working poor and middle-class so that medical care would become an option in their lives.

When asked how low and middle class Americans will manage to purchase health care, should the mandate requiring them to do so be found to be Constitutional by SCOTUS, Rehberg answered that Health and Human Services would be able to grant waivers to those who cannot afford coverage without Medicaid or subsidies.

Thus, Rehberg's solution is to simply leave millions of Americans without coverage by way of a waiver. Nice.

Health Care For America Now's Executive Director, Ethan Rome, put it this way:

Rep. Rehberg's proposal is yet another part of the Republican assault on the middle class. Denny Rehberg says that basic health care is a luxury item, as if a mother in Montana taking her children to the doctor or a cancer patient getting treatment is the same as buying 'an expensive vacation home.'

Considering that estimates place the uninsured under age 65 in Montana at somewhere between 16 percent and 20 percent of the population, a number well in excess of the national average, I suspect that Rehberg's fellow Montana might disagree with his approach.

Let's hope they voice that disagreement at the ballot box next November.

"Rep. Rehberg's proposal is yet another part of the Republican assault on the middle class. Denny Rehberg says that basic health care is a luxury item, as if a mother in Montana taking her children to the doctor or a cancer patient getting treatment is the same as buying ‘an expensive vacation home.'

"Any cuts to these essential programs would endanger the health of our parents, kids and neighbors, put the livelihoods of hardworking Americans at risk and hurt small businesses. Montana needs leaders who will create jobs, not take a meat ax to their communities.

"What Rehberg wants to do would devastate families and businesses in rural areas, where consumers pay more for health insurance and receive less care. Rehberg would stifle entrepreneurs trying to start new businesses and create jobs. Denny Rehberg has the wrong priorities.

"The only way the Super Committee can pass a rational, balanced plan is to ask corporations and the super-rich to pay their fair share of taxes, not to cut health care for kids, seniors and working families. Instead of asking the top 1% of taxpayers to pitch in and support their country, Rehberg wants to take health care away from the other 99% and make it harder for small businesses to survive. It's time for Denny Rehberg to stop siding with insurance and drug companies and other big corporations and do what's right for Montana and the nation."

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Health Care for America Now is the nation's leading grassroots health care advocacy organization. HCAN led the fight over the past two years to win passage of health reform and to keep Congress from being steamrolled by corporate special interests.

For Immediate Release - OCTOBER 6, 2011
Contact: Avram Goldstein 202-587-1634
agoldstein@healthcareforamericanow.org

Sen. David Vitter (R-LA)          $1,543,606

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT)              $101.600

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC)           $1,308,702

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT)          $3,239,594

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI)         $347,526

Rep. Joseph Pitts (R-PA)          $929,544

Rep. Steve King (R-IA)             $128,050

Rep. Tom Price (R-GA)            $2,893,682

Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX)   $1,826,348

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH)           $301,470

Source: Center for Responsive Politics

For Immediate Release - SEPTEMBER 23, 2011

Contact: Avram Goldstein 202-587-1634
agoldstein@healthcareforamericanow.org

Washington, DC - Health Care for America Now (HCAN), the nation's leading grassroots health care advocacy organization, released the following statement from HCAN Executive Director Ethan Rome on the Republican presidential candidate debate and today's first anniversary of the Affordable Care Act's Patient Bill of Rights:

"During a discussion of vaccines at the GOP presidential debate last night, Rick Perry said, ‘I will always err on the side of life, as a governor and as the President of the United States.' If only that were so. The Texas governor has for years demonstrated his lack of concern for life by not lifting a finger to reduce the skyrocketing population of uninsured Texans. One of every four Texas residents has no health insurance, forcing many of them to go without access to life-saving care. The state rate is an astonishing 62% higher then thenational rate, meaning Texans are far more likely to die prematurely or file for bankruptcy.

"Perry isn't the only one suffering from severe health care denial. The Republicans in last night's debate used extremist language to attack the Affordable Care Act at least 17 times. All of them would rather spout their ideological boilerplate than admit that the health care law has broken the insurance companies' death grip on our care.

"Here's the reality: Today marks one year since the health care law's Patient Bill of Rights took effect, enabling 1 million uninsured young adults to get health coverage. It has ended insurance company abuses like lifetime limits on health benefits and bans on excluding children with pre-existing conditions from coverage. This law hasgiven millions of seniors more affordable prescription drugs and free preventive care through Medicare. But the Republicans are holding fast to their anti-Obama talking points, so don't expect to hear those inconvenient truths from them."

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Health Care for America Now is the nation's leading grassroots health care advocacy organization. HCAN led the fight over the past three years to win passage of health reform and to keepCongress from being steamrolled by corporate special interests.

Just the other day in Iowa, GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry said, "The American dream was available to me because America was never set up as a class society." A classless society? It's too bad the Texas governor didn't alert the Republicans in Congress before they started mouthing off about how President Obama's tax proposals are "class warfare." Republican leaders were caught flat-footed on Monday, and the class-warfare talking point was the best they could do.

But this claim is nonsense. As the president said, "This is not class warfare, it's math." It's also the right thing to do. The country is in a jam, and everyone needs to pitch in. The president made a forceful argument that it's a matter of fairness to ask the wealthiest in America to do their part. Specifically, the president wants fewer than 450,000 of 144 million taxpayers to pay a bit more. That barely qualifies as shared sacrifice, let alone "warfare." And let's not forget that the wealthy did pretty well under the Bush tax cuts.

The fact is that even if the GOP wanted to do they right thing, nearly every Republican in Congress has signed Grover Norquist's "Taxpayer Protection" pledge to oppose civilization and never raise any taxes in any way, ever - including closing corporate loopholes or asking the super-rich to pay a little more. Both of those things would actually help the middle-class taxpayers the Republicans pretend to protect.

Given the sweeping nature of Norquist's cult-like pledge, it effectively makes members of Congress who adhere to it less than full members because they've signed away their ability to use all the tools available to solve problems that involve money, and money-type problems come up a lot. The Republicans like to say that every problem is a spending problem. Well, when hedge-fund managers pay lower tax rates than families that can only dream about having enough money to invest in a hedge fund, that's a tax problem, not a spending one, and it's best fixed by changing the tax code.

Virtually every Republican utterance and action in the deficit debate has been reckless, irresponsible and totally driven by politics. Now that we're entering the official election season, it's naive to think Republicans would start governing now. But the pressure is on. The president has made serious proposals, and the GOP has to figure out how to go respond with a lot more than empty bumper-sticker lines like "class warfare." Slogans won't help much when the Super Committee gets down to business.

It's old news that the GOP functions as a wholly owned subsidiary of insurance companies, Wall Street banks and other big corporations. But these are new times. When the Republicans fight tooth and nail to keep three one-hundredths of one percent of taxpayers from paying their fair share, it's a stark reminder that they won't stand up for America's working and middle-class families no matter how bad people are hurting.

Many of the GOP's traditional allies in the business community know we need to take action now to get the economy moving with more resources and initiatives like the president's jobs plan. But the Republican Party's loyalty to inside-the-beltway extremists like Norquist exceeds even their commitment to serving their corporate patrons, and that's saying something.

The president isn't talking about class warfare. He's talking about economic firepower, and that's what America needs right now.

"Only 18 months after it was enacted, the health care law is protecting families and small businesses from outrageous premium hikes. Thanks to this second round of grants to states, the era when insurers could jack up rates at will is over.

"This funding will make sure that insurance regulators continue to build technical expertise that enables them to spot unjustified rate hikes and take steps to protect the public. Along with new standards for medical-loss ratios, rate review is putting downward pressure on health insurance premiums and making them more affordable for consumers and small businesses."

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Health Care for America Now is the nation's leading grassroots health care advocacy organization. HCAN led the fight over the past two years to win passage of health reform and to keep Congress from being steamrolled by corporate special interests.

While the Republican candidates for President made it clear in their debate this week that they are happy to let uninsured people die if they have a serious illness, the Republicans in Congress are plotting to make people with insurance pay even more for their coverage to boost insurance company profits. How? By stealing nearly $2 billion in rebates that insurance companies owe consumers and small businesses and giving the money back to the insurers.

At a time when families are struggling to make ends meet, this would be an astonishing transfer of money from consumers to the already overflowing coffers of the health insurance industry, whose top five companies alone made $11.7 billion in 2010.

The heist is being promoted by the Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee. They want to repeal a provision of the Affordable Care Act, known as the medical-loss ratio (MLR). The MLR sets a minimum percentage of premiums (80 percent for individual and small-group plans and 85 percent for large group plans) that insurers spend on actual medical care instead of wasteful overhead, excessive profits and bloated executive compensation. Under the law, companies that fall short of the minimums must rebate the difference to consumers. The GOP thinks repealing this requirement is such as good idea in this weak economy that they're holding a hearing on it Thursday.

The rebates are huge because insurance companies overcharge so much. The Department of Health and Human Services estimates that consumers will receive $1.4 billion in rebates in the coming year. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners says the rebates could hit $2 billion.

Already the MLR rule is saving consumers money. Some insurance companies in California, Connecticut, Michigan and North Carolina have already rolled back rates, declared premium holidays or issued direct refunds. In Connecticut, policyholders saw rate decreases of as much as 19 percent. That's how the law is supposed to work - it forces insurance companies to change their pricing and makes them pay if they don't.

But the GOP cares more about the insurance companies than consumers and small businesses. You might even say the industry and other corporate interests and campaign contributors own the Republicans in Congress.

In fact, the health care and insurance industries have given the Republicans holding Thursday's hearing more than $21.7 million in campaign contributions, according to a new analysis by Public Campaign Action Fund. Maybe that's why they are willing to take so much money from consumers and give it to health insurers even as they rake in record profits on the backs of families and businesses being crushed by a bad economy.

We desperately need to help working and middle-class families, support small businesses and put America back to work. That's what our representatives in Congress should be doing, not robbing money from people trying to keep up with their bills.

Cross posted on the Huffington Post here.

Washington, DC - Health Care for America Now (HCAN), the nation's leading grassroots health care advocacy organization, expressed outrage today at comments made last night at a GOP forum in which presidential candidates indicated they'd sooner abandon an uninsured person to die than see the government play a role in providing access to life-saving health care.

In response to questions from CNN's Wolf Blitzer, candidate Ron Paul said people should go without insurance if they like, and audience members shouted that a severely ill person should be allowed to die if he had no health insurance. Paul said uninsured people with expensive, long-term medical problems should turn to their churches and relatives rather than expect to be helped by a government safety net. None of the other presidential candidates objected.

See a clip of the GOP debate exchange here.

"Last night the Republicans made a shocking public display of their brazen disregard for the well-being of 50 million uninsured people," said HCAN Executive Director Ethan Rome. "When the GOP talks about the freedom of uninsured people to wither and die, they're also talking about restoring the freedom of insurance companies to jack up your premium rates, deny your care and abuse families and small businesses. That's the way it was before the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010. They reject the idea that our government has any role at all in setting rules that stop insurance companies from mistreating the public and that make health insurance affordable for families and small businesses. Republicans have zero concern about the needs of working and middle-class families who cannot afford the medical care they need."

Lack of health insurance causes 45,000 deaths a year in the U.S. Witnessing members of the audience at Monday's Tea Party forum shout that it would be better to let a 30-year-old man die than to have our government provide access to health care tells us all we need to know about the real family values of the Republicans, Rome said.

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Health Care for America Now is the nation's leading grassroots health care advocacy organization. HCAN led the fight over the past two years to win passage of health reform and to keep Congress from being steamrolled by corporate special interests.

Washington, DC - Health Care for America Now (HCAN), the nation's leading grassroots health care advocacy organization, released the following statement from HCAN Executive Director Ethan Rome on today's report from the U.S. Census Bureau on health insurance coverage in 2010:

"The Census Bureau report is fresh evidence that full implementation of the Affordable Care Act can't come soon enough. The economy is in rough shape, and when people lose their jobs, they lose their health insurance. The ACA will stop this madness and make sure people have health insurance no matter what happens.

"Even in its first phase of implementation, the health care law has expanded coverage, helping 500,000 young adults get insurance - many of them through new access to their parents' health plans. The numbers of people who will be have access to life-saving health care will grow exponentially in 2014, when the main coverage expansions of the Affordable Care Act take effect."

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Health Care for America Now is the nation's leading grassroots health care advocacy organization. HCAN led the fight over the past two years to win passage of health reform and to keep Congress from being steamrolled by corporate special interests.

Washington, DC - Health Care for America Now (HCAN), the nation's leading grassroots health care advocacy organization, released the following statement from HCAN Executive Director Ethan Rome on President Obama's plan to create jobs:

"Tonight the President asked Congress to take concrete actions to create jobs and support America's working and middle-class families. The President challenged Congress to decide whose side they are on and to support his American Jobs Act.

"The President's jobs bill will make a real difference in peoples' lives. The Republicans have supported its key provisions before and Congress should adopt the plan right now.

"Throughout these tough times, the Republicans have made clear they would rather protect big corporations and the super-rich than put America back to work. The GOP has acted to protect tax loopholes for corporate jet owners and Big Oil instead of protecting America's struggling small businesses and families. If the Republicans had their way, they'd decimate Medicare and Social Security and give more tax cuts to the very wealthy - proposals that won't create a single job or help any businesses keep their doors open. It's time for the Republicans to put politics aside and stand with America's working and middle-class families.

"The President also made clear that we need everyone to pitch in by paying their fair share of taxes. There is simply no way to create jobs, support business and revive the middle class unless big corporations and the super-rich pay their fair share."

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Health Care for America Now is the nation's leading grassroots health care advocacy organization. HCAN led the fight over the past two years to win passage of health reform and to keep Congress from being steamrolled by corporate special interests.

Washington, DC - Health Care for America Now (HCAN), the nation's leading grassroots health care advocacy organization, released the following statement from HCAN Executive Director Ethan Rome on today's 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals rulings on the Affordable Care Act:

"Today's court decisions in Virginia removed politically motivated legal roadblocks to implementation of the Affordable Care Act. This law is not going to be stopped by political or judicial sabotage. Opponents should stop playing politics with people's health care. The protections against insurance company abuses such as discrimination against people with pre-existing conditions are here to stay. Along with previous rulings issued by the 11^th and 6^th circuits, these decisions make clear that health care reform must move forward."

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Health Care for America Now is the nation's leading grassroots health care advocacy organization. HCAN led the fight over the past two years to win passage of health reform and to keep Congress from being steamrolled by corporate special interests.

For Immediate Release - AUGUST 12, 2011
Contact: Melinda Gibson 202-454-6189
mgibson@healthcareforamericanow.org

Washington, DC - Health Care for America Now (HCAN), the nation's leading grassroots health care advocacy organization, released the following statement from HCAN Executive Director Ethan Rome on today's 11^th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruling on the Affordable Care Act:

"The 11th Circuit corrects the lower court's extraordinary judicial overreach and upholds the major benefits and consumer protections of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). This decision makes clear that the courts will not undo health care reform and that insurance company abuses like discrimination against people with pre-existing conditions will not be tolerated.

The 11th Circuit sent a clear message to the politicians who brought this suit and every state in the nation that implementation of health care reform must move forward.

As for the individual responsibility provision, four courts, including the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, found the law constitutional. The law will work best and insurance will be most affordable if everyone has coverage.  That's what the individual responsibility provision is about and we are confident it will ultimately be upheld."

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Health Care for America Now is the nation's leading grassroots health care advocacy organization. HCAN led the fight over the past two years to win passage of health reform and to keep Congress from being steamrolled by corporate special interests.

HCAN Calls for Immediate Rebates Under Affordable Care Act Guidelines

Washington, DC — Profits at the five largest for-profit health insurance companies surged again in the second quarter as their customers continued to cut back on doctor and hospital visits in a slowing economy, according to new financial data released by the industry. Health Care for America Now (HCAN), the nation’s leading grassroots health care advocacy group, said the record-breaking profits show that the insurers continue to foist excessive and unjustified rate hikes on families and small businesses.

“While America’s families and businesses are struggling in a tough economy, insurance companies are racking up unconscionable profits,” said HCAN Executive Director Ethan Rome. “Premiums have gone up 131% since 1999, and people are struggling with every kind of household expense. People need relief. The law says the insurers have to make these refunds, so they might as well do it now when people really need the money.”

Under a consumer protection provision in the Affordable Care Act, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates that insurers will owe up to 9 million customers as much as $1.4 billion in 2011 rebates payable next year. The new rule (medical-loss ratio) sets a minimum percentage of premiums (80% for individual and small group plans and
85% for large groups) that insurers must spend on actual medical care instead of wasteful overhead, excessive profits and bloated CEO salaries. Companies that fall short of the minimums must rebate the difference to consumers.

According to an analysis by HCAN, Wall Street-run health insurance companies took $7 billion in profits in the first half of 2011 by charging more and spending much less on patient care.

In California, Connecticut and North Carolina, some insurers were so embarrassed by excessive profits piling up in their accounts that they rolled backed rates, declared premium holidays or issued direct refunds. “The entire industry should do the same on a national scale,” Rome said. Despite claims that insurance company premium growth reflects actual changes in medical costs, their increases have consistently been twice the rate of medical inflation.

See below for more information on insurance company profits.

Health Insurers Continue Profit Surge in Second Quarter

Combined profits for UnitedHealth Group Inc., WellPoint Inc., Aetna Inc., Cigna Corp. and Humana Inc., which cover one-third of the U.S. population, surged 13.5% to $3.4 billion in the second quarter. If the trend holds, the five companies will take a record $14 billion in profits in 2011. Through the economic recession and its aftermath from 2008 to 2010, combined profits for the five companies increased 51 percent. In 2010, profits grew 17 percent, excluding a one-time $2.2 billion gain from the 2009 sale of a WellPoint subsidiary.

The insurance industry claims to have a low average profit margin of 4.4%, but so far in 2011, Aetna has reported a health care profit margin of 11%, Cigna 7.4%, WellPoint 7.8%, and UnitedHealth 7.7%.

Insurers defend their increasing wealth by saying their profits represent less than one penny of every dollar of national health spending, but that is deceptive. One penny of every health care dollar amounts to $347 billion over the 10 years ending in 2019, according to government projections.

LOWER HEALTH CARE SPENDING

In the second quarter of 2011, growth in premiums rapidly outpaced increases in spending on patient care. Aetna led the industry in finding ways to avoid covering actual health care by shifting medical costs to working families and employers through skimpier coverage and higher deductibles. As a result, the share of premiums Aetna spent in the first quarter on medical care (known in industry parlance as the medical-loss ratio) dropped to 77.9%, a hefty 2.2 percentage-point decline from 80.1% a year earlier. UnitedHealth also trimmed its health care costs, spending 80.7% of premiums on patient care, down from 81.9% the year before. Insurers used to be free to devote any percentage of premium revenue to lavish CEO pay, marketing, administration, lobbying, the care-denial bureaucracy and claims handling services that foul up one in every five claims. The Affordable Care Act will finally rein them in with rebates scheduled for issuance in 2012.

“Americans are struggling to find work, hold onto their homes and provide for their families,” Rome said. “There’s no reason for insurance companies to wait a year to return premium overpayments that they owe and consumers need.”

Medical Loss Ratios Dropped for Most Insurers in Second Quarter

Source: U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings

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Health Care for America Now is a national grassroots coalition of more than 1,000 organizations in 46 states representing 30 million people. HCAN led the fight over the past two years to win passage of health reform and to keep Congress from being steamrolled by corporate special interests.

Download the full report in pdf form here.

It would be easy to criticize Speaker John Boehner's reckless and irresponsible political theater, but yesterday's spectacle in Congress speaks for itself. Enough! Call Congress and demand a clean debt-ceiling increase now.

For good reason, raising the debt ceiling has always been a routine bipartisan act of Congress. It is dangerous and foolish to toy with default by linking debt-ceiling increase to any contentious legislative initiative. This is especially true of a budget debate that forces fundamental questions over whether our government should protect tax loopholes for millionaires, billionaires and big corporations or protect seniors and middle-class families, a debate further complicated because it exposes deep divisions within the House Republican caucus.

That's why a clean debt-ceiling bill is the best way to solve this crisis.

Speaker Boehner's effort today to get the votes for a debt package that is dead-on-arrival in the Senate is as pointless as it is dangerous. Boehner and the Republicans are bringing us one step closer to a crisis that will wreck our economy and disrupt the lives of America's families. Because of their extremism, seniors may not get their Social Security checks and our soldiers fighting overseas will have to worry about whether their families back home will get their pay.

Our nation's politics have historically been held together by core values about putting country above party, about working together for the common good, especially in times of crisis. The House Republicans are tossing those values out the window.

This has to stop.

We can't wait anymore — it's time for Congress to raise the debt ceiling immediately. You can click this link and tell Congress to act now.

Washington, DC – Health Care for America Now (HCAN), the nation’s largest grassroots health care advocacy group, will join other progressive organizations today to stage more than 100 events nationwide to demand a debt deal that protects seniors and the middle class while making sure the wealthy and big corporations pay their fair share.

Republicans in the House and Senate are on the verge of inflicting major damage on our economy by refusing to drop a radical plan to balance the budget on the backs of seniors and the middle class by slashing Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security and preserving outlandish tax breaks for millionaires, private jet owners and big corporations.

“The Republicans are waging an all-out assault on the middle class in order to protect the super-rich and big corporations when we need a balanced approach to avert a crisis that will wreck the economy,” said HCAN Executive Director Ethan Rome. “People are fed up with the Republicans, who want to slash Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security just to protect tax breaks for millionaires, billionaires and big corporations. People are taking action because they want Congress to create jobs and the Republicans to stop wasting precious time pushing their extremist agenda.”

HCAN is joining with project coordinator MoveOn.org and a host of progressive organizations, including AFL-CIO, AFSCME, Alliance for Retired Americans, National Education Association, Protect Your Care, SEIU, and USAction.

Today’s events are the continuation of a massive grassroots lobbying campaign that jammed telephone lines to Congress, brought picketers to congressional district offices coast to coast and engaged tens of thousands of people opposed to a debt-ceiling deal that slashes Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security while giving tax breaks to millionaires, private jet owners and big corporations.

In the past two weeks HCAN has held more than 50 events across the country demanding members of Congress stop protecting millionaires and billionaires and preserve Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security for middle-class Americans. HCAN supporters this month also made 5,000 calls to senators and representatives' offices.

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Health Care for America Now is the nation’s leading grassroots health care advocacy organization. HCAN led the fight over the past two years to win passage of health reform and to keep Congress from being steamrolled by corporate special interests.

House Speaker John Boehner should be ashamed of his deceitful speech Monday night. He didn't tell the truth. After introducing himself as the speaker of "the whole House," Boehner spoke as a political partisan and not a practical problem solver.

Boehner is a hostage of the Tea Party fanatics in his caucus and the Republicans' obsession with protecting tax loopholes for the wealthiest Americans and corporations, like hedge fund managers, corporate jet owners, oil companies and other special interests.

Boehner's response to the president was an astonishing display of revisionist history and brutish partisan politics. Boehner described his plans in poll-tested generalities, but what he didn't tell the American people was that his proposal would cut $1.8 trillion from Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, in order to protect millionaires, billionaires and big corporations from paying their fair share. It's almost cartoonishly diabolical. The GOP's approach would paralyze Washington by forcing Congress to revisit this issue again and again instead of creating the jobs our country needs.

Monday night, Boehner told one lie after another. Not half-truths or mischaracterizations. Lies. He saved the biggest lies for how he described the debt ceiling talks themselves. He said, "I made a sincere effort to work with the president," yet every time the deal gets closer to what the Republicans want they run away. He said, "The president would not take yes for an answer." That's what the president said about Boehner last week. The difference is, when the president said it, it was true and still is.

Boehner then said that the president "wants a blank check." That's absurd. How can anyone argue that a plan with trillions of dollars in spending cuts is a blank check? The cuts being discussed are historic. They're massive.

The simple fact is that the Republicans are not working with the president to avert a crisis, they're doing everything they can to create one. In contrast, President Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress have repeatedly made clear that they're willing to work with the Republicans to develop a sensible, long-term budget and avert an economic disaster that will reverberate around the world.

President Obama has always said we need a balanced plan that includes both spending cuts and revenue. It's only fair that everyone should pitch in, including millionaires, billionaires and the big corporations, and it's critical that we protect Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security from budget cuts that would devastate America's seniors and middle-class families.

The Republicans now have to decide whether they want to govern or keep saying no to protect the wealthiest people and corporations in America. The GOP's extremist position against a balanced approach won't create a single job or help a single business keep its doors open. The Republicans' fanaticism and brinkmanship is out of control and puts at risk our economy and the financial security of all Americans.

President Obama made clear again that he's willing to work with the Republicans to develop a sensible, long-term budget and avert an economic disaster that will reverberate around the world.

Boehner’s response to the president was an astonishing display of revisionist history and partisan politics. The Republicans have offered a reckless, short-term plan that insists on taking away Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits that seniors depend on in order to protect millionaires, billionaires and big corporations from paying their fair share. The GOP’s approach would paralyze Washington by forcing Congress to revisit this issue again and again instead of creating the jobs our countryneeds.

President Obama has always said we need a balanced plan that includes both spending cuts and revenue. It's only fair that everyone should pitch in, including millionaires, billionaires and the big corporations, and it's critical that we protect Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security from budget cuts that would devastate America's seniors and middle-class families.

The Republicans now have to decide if they want to govern or keep saying no to protect the wealthiest people and corporations in America. The GOP's extremist position against a balanced approach won't create a single job or help a single business keep its doors open. The Republicans' fanaticism and brinkmanship is out of control and puts at risk our economy and the financial security of all Americans.

The extremist GOP has recklessly politicized one of the most important governing opportunities of a lifetime - Speaker of the House John Boehner walked away from bipartisan debt-ceiling talks at the last minute to protect tax loopholes for millionaires, billionaires and big corporations.

It was an astonishing display of crass, reckless partisan politics to appease the Speaker's base of Tea Party fanatics in Congress and his special-interest campaign contributors, which increasingly control him instead of his better instincts to do the right thing.

The debt-ceiling talks are about setting priorities and making hard choices. Speaker Boehner, Majority Leader Cantor and the Republicans have made their choices clear: In the negotiations they have chosen to put tax cuts for big corporations and super-rich people before all other considerations.

The Speaker and the GOP have put ideological purity and pandering to extremist right-wing interest groups and their Republican mouthpieces in Congress before problem solving to avert a crisis. Before deficit reduction. Before job creation. Before helping America's seniors and working and middle-class families get by in this tough economy.

It isn't any more complicated that. They've made their choices clear. And so, too, has the president.

By all accounts the parties were moments away from a deal that met the vast majority of the Republicans' demands while forcing Democrats to accept a disturbingly long list of concessions on core principles and priority programs they hold dear. And yet giving the Republicans a lot of what they wanted was not enough because the Republicans' dirty secret is that they don't really care about the deficit. And as the president has said, the Republicans simply don't know how to say yes. Instead, the GOP has engaged in political brinkmanship on steroids to protect tax loopholes for the wealthiest Americans and big corporations that need those tax breaks less than anyone.

When the Republicans walked away from an imminent bipartisan deal, they threw the economy, the international markets and seniors and middle-class families under the bus. They're willing to default on Americans' financial obligations and default on the American dream, which has bee made possible by programs like Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, college aid and much more.

It's now abundantly clear that the Republicans are willing to drive our economy off a cliff rather than ask corporations and the super-rich to pay their fair share. They're willing to end Medicare as we know it rather than ask corporate jet owners to give up their excessive and unjustifiable tax breaks. They're willing to slash Medicaid and literally kick millions of seniors out of nursing homes — and shift billions of dollars of costs to the states while costing millions of jobs — rather than force Big Oil companies to give up their special tax loopholes.

The GOP's recklessness and irresponsibility has no limits even at this perilous moment. Unfortunately, they're not in power to govern. They don't care about getting things done for the best interest of the country. They're in power to posture and position themselves for the next election, and that's the last thing the country needs right now. I'm still hopeful that the Speaker will come around to a responsible way to solve a problem, but I hope that doesn't include the deal that was on the table because Obama was giving away too much in his effort to get a deal that would avoid default.

What's missing from the talks is the simple fact that seniors and middle-class families didn't cause the debt and shouldn't have to pay for it. Shredding the economic security of struggling families and small businesses is simply the wrong way to go. It's a bad deal for America, even it it's bipartisan.

The answer now seems pretty clear — if a fair deal can't be arrived at promptly, the president and legislative leaders should do what's both achievable and what makes the most economic and policy sense: They should have a clean vote on the debt ceiling now so we can end the gridlock and get to the business of governing and addressing job creation and other top priorities.

Federal Officials Try Again to Bolster Plans For People With Medical Conditions

By Michelle Andrews

Jul 05, 2011

How low can they go? Experts agreed that pricey premiums for the new “pre-existing condition insurance plans” created under the health care overhaul were partly to blame for anemic enrollment in the plans, which reached just 21,454 after several months, compared with potentially hundreds of thousands that had been projected.

Starting July 1, the Obama administration reduced premiums by up to 40 percent in 17 states and the District of Columbia where it runs the new high-risk programs and encouraged other states to follow suit. The reductions were possible because federal officials now have state-specific data that allowed them to more accurately peg the premiums to the rates for individual plans in the state, as the law requires, says Steven Larsen, director of the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Another provision of the health reform law could help make the plans—which are aimed at people with medical conditions who can’t get coverage on the private individual market—even more affordable.

Under the law, starting in 2012 insurers must spend at least 80 percent of the premiums they collect on medical claims, as opposed to administration or profit, or pay rebates to consumers for the excess amount collected.

Some insurers are already reducing premiums to meet the new “medical loss ratio” requirements. (Medical claims paid are considered losses in insurance jargon.) If tough economic times continue and people cut back on medical care, experts say other insurers may follow suit. “Plans are getting nervous about how big the rebates they’re going to have to pay are,” says Timothy Jost, a law professor at Washington and Lee University who’s a consumer representative to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

If insurers lower premiums in the individual market to meet the law’s new MLR requirements, that could be good news for the PCIP programs, whose rates are supposed to be no higher than standard rates in a state’s individual market.

Talk about further reductions can wait for another day. “It’s possible,” that the medical loss ratio requirements might further depress premiums in the PCIPs, says Larsen. However, “I wouldn’t care to speculate about that.”

Read more about high-risk insurance plans.

The President and Democratic Leaders obviously have a huge responsibility in the debt limit talks. But if there's ever been a time to drive a hard bargain, this is it. There's nothing irresponsible about staring down the Republicans and making them blink. These negotiations boil down to fundamental choices and priorities, and the differences between the sides could not be more stark. Democrats are for working and middle-class families. The Republicans are for rich people and big corporations. Seniors and middle-class families need to win this time.

That's why it was encouraging to hear White House spokesman Jay Carney sum it up so well on Monday: "Do we perpetuate a system that allows for subsidies in revenues for oil and gas, for example, or owners of corporate private jets, and then call for cuts in things like food safety or weather services?"

Carney's question was spot on, and Democrats should forcefully answer it with a resounding "no." Democrats should insist on cutting spending on things like tax breaks for Big Oil and owners of corporate jets before agreeing to any other cuts (as Drew Westen has suggested). There's no basis for whacking seniors and middle-class families by cutting vital programs before ending outrageous tax loopholes for people and companies that don't need them. When it comes to Medicare and Medicaid, there's no rationale for taking a meat ax to these programs at all.

Deep Medicaid cuts, for example, will cause serious, irreparable harm to people. Millions of seniors would be thrown out of nursing homes. Middle-class families would be slammed with crushing health care costs for their parents while struggling to make ends meet, save for retirement and send kids to college. Children and people with disabilities will go without needed care. Huge costs will be shifted to state governments, jobs will be lost and the economy will be hurt.

Democrats have to resist the Republican plan to destroy Medicaid as fiercely as they are fighting the Republican proposal to end Medicare as we know it. They shouldn't cave in on this issue. That would be devastating for people and for the political fortunes of Democrats.

As for tax loopholes for the corporate jet set and others, Democrats should never agree that eliminating tax breaks is the same as increasing taxes. It's not. It's a cut of wasteful, obscene and unaffordable government spending on people and corporations that are awash in money and don't need more - especially in the form of handouts paid for by middle-class taxpayers. It's worth shouting this every minute of every day.

These tax breaks are as pointless and unconscionable as they are extravagant. Can we really afford to spend $21 billion of our tax dollars giving a break to Big Oil, the most profitable companies in the history of the world? Or spend $3.7 trillion continuing the Bush tax cuts for the rich? The Bush tax cuts are responsible for about a third of the national debt. And there are obviously more important things to spend tax dollars on - like a real jobs program that puts people back to work.

America can't afford useless tax cuts for millionaires, billionaires and big corporations. It's been shown repeatedly that cutting taxes for the super rich does nothing to create jobs and grow the economy. Tax cuts for high-income people and companies only make rich people richer at a time when middle-class families are struggling to hang on. Instead, we should be raising revenue by increasing taxes on folks in the highest income brackets, as Rep.Jan Schakowsky of Illinois has sensibly proposed. Asking America's wealthiest people to pitch in and pay their fair share is good policy and politics.

The Republicans aren't interested in deficit reduction or the budget. They are mounting a frontal assault on the middle class. It's about shrinking government and remaking our society so millionaires and corporations get even richer while the rest of us are left with crumbs.

People are hurting and understandably angry. Some Republicans don't know this, and most don't care. But Democrats do. That's why it's worth fighting so hard for seniors and the middle class in the debt limit talks. The stakes are high. The federal government can't default on its debt obligations. We also can't tear apart the programs that preserve and expand the middle class. We can't default on the American Dream. Democrats must keep alive the promise of economic security and opportunity for the people who built this country and make it work.

Insurers, awash in billions of dollars in record profits and excess capital, should give consumers their money back

The health insurance industry continues reporting record-setting profits while socking consumers with unjustified and excessive rate hikes. Today, Health Care for America Now (HCAN) called on the Wall Street-run health care profit machines to accelerate the consumer rebates required by the Affordable Care Act and immediately give back billions in premium overcharges to families and businesses.

Year after year insurance companies have imposed double-digit premium hikes on America's families and businesses to pay for their excessive profits and financial shell games.

The insurance companies say that their premiums reflect costs, but that's simply not true. Rates have gone up by an astounding 131% since 1999. That's twice the rate of medical inflation. It's also three times greater than wage growth, and it's busting family budgets and employer balance sheets.

Fortunately the Affordable Care Act is changing things. Under a consumer protection provision in the new law, the Health and Human Services Department estimates that insurers will owe up to 9 million customers as much as $1.4 billion in 2011 rebates payable next year. The new rule - called the medical-loss ratio - sets a minimum percentage of premiums (80% for individual and small group plans and 85% for large group plans) that insurers spend on actual medical care instead of wasteful overhead, excessive profits and bloated CEO salaries. Companies that fall short of the minimums must rebate the money to consumers.

Some insurers in California, Connecticut and North Carolina have already rolled backed rates, declared premium holidays or issued direct refunds. The rest of the industry should do the same nationwide.

Here are five reasons why insurance companies can and should roll back rates now:

1. Insurance company profits have gone too far.

Through the economic recession and its aftermath from 2008 to 2010, the combined profits for UnitedHealth Group Inc., WellPoint Inc., Aetna Inc., Cigna Corp. and Humana Inc. increased 51 percent.

In the first quarter of 2011, the combined profits of the five companies, which cover one-third of the U.S. population, surged 14% to $3.6 billion. If the trend holds, they'll rake in a record $14.4 billion in profits in 2011.

2. Premiums are going up while medical spending is going down.

Premiums have risen 131% since 1999 for families with employment-based insurance. America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the insurance industry's mouthpiece, likes to blame customers for rising premiums. People who buy health insurance have the annoying habit of using it when they get sick. But premiums have increased at twice the rate of medical inflation.

And, as a percentage, insurers are spending less of our premium dollars on actual medical care, and more on administrative costs like lavish CEO pay, marketing, lobbying, and the care-denial bureaucracy. The ratio of medical to administrative costs is known as the medical-loss ratio. In the first quarter of 2011, Cigna led the industry in finding ways to avoid covering actual health care - the share of premiums Cigna spent in the first quarter on medical care dropped to 77.3%, an extraordinary 5.6 percentage-point decline from 82.9% a year earlier. Aetna trimmed its health care costs from 81.1% of premium revenue to 77%. And Humana reduced its patient-care spending rate by 3.5 percentage points.

3. CEOs Spend Billions on Dividends and Stock Buybacks to Boost Share Prices and Enrich Themselves.

Record profits and reduced health care spending don't tell the whole story. Insurance companies use other Wall Street tools to quietly direct customer cash into their own pockets. For instance, insurers bought back $1.8 billion in their own stock in the first quarter - a practice that reduces the number of shares available in the market and boosts stock prices.

Since 2003, the five largest for-profit companies have allocated $66.9 billion in customer cash to buying back their own stock to reward insiders and Wall Street investors. So far this year, share prices for the five health insurers have risen 38% to 52%, compared to less than 3% for the broad market index. This benefits CEOs who hold large stakes in their own companies and who get bonuses, stock awards and stock options for guiding share prices upward. Buybacks do nothing to improve public health, make insurers more efficient or reduce premiums.

The five big for-profit health insurers have been so profitable that they're shoveling it back to investors. WellPoint announced that it plans to pay $400 million in dividends this year, while UnitedHealth plans a dividend of $449 million and Aetna expects to pay $230 million.

4. Insurance companies hoard cash in the name of "solvency."

In addition to excessive profits and stock buybacks, insurers have also been building massive capital reserves. On December 31, the nation's for-profit and nonprofit health insurance companies were holding $97.3 billion in risk-based capital to cover unexpected medical claims - six times more than state regulators require, according to Citigroup Global Markets.

5. While insurance companies are awash in cash, families and businesses are barely getting by.

It's unconscionable that insurance companies continue to impose double-digit premium hikes on America's families and businesses to pay for their excess profits and financial shell games at a time when consumers and employers are struggling in this tough economy.

At the end of this year, the new health law requires insurers to square up and pay us back for their excesses. But insurers shouldn't wait to give back our money. They should start paying consumers their rebates right now.

Washington, DC—With the health insurance industry reporting record profits while continuing to sock consumers with unjustified and excessive rate hikes, Health Care for America Now (HCAN) is demanding that insurers accelerate rebates required by the Affordable Care Act and immediately give back billions in premium overcharges to families and businesses.

“While America’s families and businesses are struggling in this tough economy, insurance companies are making money hand over fist,” said HCAN Executive Director Ethan Rome. “They’re making record profits by spending less on health care and playing financial games to boost their earnings and build up billions of dollars in cash reserves. Premiums have gone up 131% since 1999. The insurance companies should put an end to their price-gouging and roll back their rates right now.”

Some insurers in California, Connecticut and North Carolina have rolled backed rates, declared premium holidays or issued direct refunds. “The rest of the industry should do the same on a national scale,” Rome said.

According to an analysis by HCAN, the nation’s leading grassroots health care advocacy group, Wall Street-run health insurance companies generated huge profits in the first quarter of this year by charging more and spending much less on patient care.

At the same time, the insurance companies have quietly shifted billions of dollars to Wall Street investors through stock “buybacks” and built capital reserves substantially larger thanrequired by regulators. Meanwhile, despite insurance company claims that rising premiums reflect actual increases in medical costs, their rate hikes have consistently been twice the rate of medical inflation.

Under a consumer protection provision in the Affordable Care Act, the Health and Human Services Department estimates that insurers will owe up to 9 million customers as much as $1.4 billion in 2011 rebates payable next year. The new rule (medical-loss ratio) sets a minimum percentage of premiums (80% for individual and small group plans and 85% for large group plans) that insurers spend on actual medical care instead of wasteful overhead, excessive profits and bloated CEO salaries. Companies that fall short of the minimums must rebate the money to consumers.

“Families and businesses are barely hanging on while the insurance companies are swimming in cash,” Rome said. “There’s no reason to wait. The insurers should start paying consumers their rebates right now.”

Read the full report here.

“Congress clearly has the authority to regulate the health insurance market, including protecting consumers from insurance industry abuses and making health care affordable for families, seniors and businesses. The best way to protect consumers and control costs is to make sure everyone has affordable health insurance, and that's what the Affordable Care Act does.

“As for the individual mandate, everyone knows the Republicans invented the idea. They didn’t decide it was unconstitutional until it became a part of the health care law they had a political reason to oppose.

“We are encouraged that the judges today discussed the law on its merits without injecting overt partisanship into the process, and we are confident the Affordable Care Act will ultimately be upheld.

“The American people will not allow the courts or Congress to return us to the time when insurance companies could exclude people because of pre-existing conditions, drop people for getting sick, jack up rates when they please or let benefit caps force people with serious diseases into bankruptcy.”

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Health Care for America Now is a national grassroots coalition of more than 1,000 organizations in 46 states representing 30 million people. HCAN led the fight over the past two years to win passage of health reform and to keep Congress from being steamrolled by corporate special interests.

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If the Republicans get their way and turn Medicaid into a so-called block grant, millions of seniors would be thrown out of nursing homes. Middle class families would be slammed with crushing health care costs for their parents while struggling to make ends meet, save for their own retirement and send kids to college. Children and people with disabilities will go without needed care. Huge costs will be shifted to state governments, jobs will be lost and the economy will be hurt.

All of this is why Democrats have to resist the Republican plan to destroy Medicaid as fiercely as Democrats and their allies are fighting the Republican proposal to end Medicare as we know it.

Now is the time to intensify this battle. We're right on the merits, we're winning on Medicare, and the public is with us. Just as voters are overwhelmingly opposed to privatizing Medicare and replacing it with inadequate vouchers, there is also strong public support for preserving Medicaid services like critical nursing home care for seniors. Half of Americans report a personal connection to Medicaid, either for themselves or a friend or family member.

The political environment has changed dramatically since the Republican plan was first proposed. Democrats and advocacy groups have taken the offensive with a huge national Medicare fight. Democrat Kathy Hochul ran on the issue and scored an upset victory in the deeply red 26th congressional district of New York. While four Republican senators stood up to their party and rejected this misguided proposal, the rest of the GOP has closed ranks and made support of the plan a litmus test for presidential candidates.

The Medicare proposal is part of a Republican assault on the middle class that also includes this draconian attack on Medicaid and the people who benefit from it — seniors, children, and people with chronic illnesses and disabilities. They're making these and other cuts (like tuition assistance for college students) to pay for tax cuts for the rich, and tax breaks for Big Oil and other special interests.

Medicaid covers nearly 60 million people, about half of them children. Seniors and people with disabilities make up one-quarter of Medicaid enrollees and account for two-thirds of Medicaid spending. Medicaid is the primary payer for 64 percent of all nursing home residents. These folks count on it to protect them at a time in their lives when they have no other choices.

How would the Republican Medicaid scheme work? Under the current system, state Medicaid programs receive federal matching funds based on the number of people in need and the costs of care in that state. Under the GOP's block grant proposal, states would instead receive lump sums set in advance and capped. The Republican plan eliminates Medicaid's guarantee of coverage and would slash nearly $800 billion in services over the next decade. Federal spending on Medicaid would be cut by 35 percent in 2021 and in half by 2030. So it's not a courageous innovation from House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan — it's a shift of billions of dollars of costs to state taxpayers and a dramatic reduction in needed services.

If states wanted to maintain their current level of Medicaid services, they'd have to make unacceptable cuts in other areas or raise new revenues. In reality, those states would be forced to make substantial and painful cuts. Fewer people would be covered, and their benefits would be scaled back. Other states, such as those with Republican governors who have been agitating in favor of this plan, would impose especially deep cuts. These cuts would have a far-reaching impact on families, businesses, state governments and regional economies:

• Millions of seniors would be left without nursing home coverage, their families forced to dig into their own pockets to care for them. The average cost of nursing home care in the U.S. is $74,800 a year, while the median household income is only about $52,000. The math just doesn't work.
• Three million jobs would be robbed from our national economy, jeopardizing our recovery when job creation should be the top priority.
• Millions of children in low-income families would have to make do without adequate medical services, hurting their quality of life and the quality of their education. For example, children with conditions like unmanaged asthma and chronic allergies would miss school and find it difficult to concentrate when they are in attendance, compromising their school performance and limiting their educational and economic prospects.
• Billions of dollars in health costs will be shifted to the states, which will no longer be able to turn to the federal government for resources to care for more people in need because of economic downturns or emergencies.
• Millions of Americans in the sandwich generation will find it impossible to save the hundreds of thousands of dollars they will need for their own retirement and health care along with the health care needs of their parents. Combined with other pressures like cuts in college aid, working and middle class families will fall farther and farther behind.
• What's more, the block-grant plan would shift hundreds of billions of dollars in costs onto doctors and hospitals, sending private health plan premiums even higher.

The Republicans' Medicaid & Medicare plan isn't just an attack on health care — it's a systematic effort to undermine the economic security of all of America's families. We can't preserve and expand the middle class if people don't have affordable health care they can count on. These days, people have enough to worry about with high unemployment, rising gas and food prices and mortgages they can barely afford. Democrats have forced the Republicans to blink on Medicare. They should do the same on Medicaid, and the rest of us should do our part to help.

Excerpt from Ethan Rome's testimony:

While much of the country is still struggling in this tough economy, health insurance companies have posted record profits with premiums that are crushing America’s families, seniors and businesses. That’s why the provisions of the law that hold the health insurance companies accountable, end their worst abuses and curb unreasonable rate hikes are a critical part of the ACA.

Thanks to the law, we now have a minimum percentage of our premiums that insurers must spend on actual medical care instead of wasteful overhead, excessive profits, and bloated executive compensation.

This rule, known as the medical-loss ratio, combats the long-term downward trend in insurers’ spending on medical care as a percentage of premiums…

When we hear opponents of the ACA talk about repeal, what they’re really talking about is protecting excessive insurance company profits and giving our health care back to the insurance companies.

Read Ethan Rome's full testimony (including supporting documents) as submitted to the House Energy and Commerce Committee here.

The health insurance industry's mouthpiece doesn't want the rest of us to know what Wall Street knows well — the record-breaking profits of the health insurance companies are, in fact, excessive.

In response to astonishingly high first-quarter profit reports from health insurance companies, the industry trade group America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), claims it is among the least profitable health care industries. AHIP says the health insurance industry profit margin is only 4.4%, and that this "low margin" represents less than one penny out of every dollar spent on all health care in the U.S. These are simplistic and misleading statistics.

Last week the New York Times reported that the health insurance industry is enjoying record earnings while millions of Americans get less medical care. Wall Street investors are delighted with the industry's profits, and to health insurance executives, that's all that counts. Insurance CEOs want investors to buy their stock and keep share prices marching higher, and that's exactly what has happened. To achieve excessive profits, insurers are happy to gouge consumers and small businesses, do little to rein in medical costs and spend billions of our premium dollars on lobbying, secret political activities, bloated executive pay and stock buybacks.

AHIP's focus on profit margins is misleading and designed to protect their massive income by shifting attention away from their return on equity — a key measure of profits as a percentage of the amount invested. That return is a phenomenal 16.1% as of today. By that measure, health insurers are ranked fourth highest of the 16 industries in the health care sector. They also deliver a higher return for investors than cellphone companies, beer companies, mortgage companies, life insurance companies, TV broadcasters, drug store companies or grocery stores.

AHIP likes to talk about how insurance profits are a small share of national health spending — less then one penny of every dollar spent on health care in the U.S. — but that is an absurd, deceptive and self-serving statistic. Yet even their own chart of this data shows that the share of the health care economy sucked up by health insurance profits has more than tripled over the past decade.

One penny of the health care dollar is worth $347 billion over 10 years ending in 2019. That one penny would pay for more than one-third of the entire cost of the health reform program.

In response to a memo that Health Care for America Now (HCAN) sent to news outlets yesterday, AHIP attacked HCAN for pointing out the insurance industry's misleading use of statistics. Yet AHIP did not challenge the validity of HCAN's critique. That makes sense, because they are wrong on this issue.

The health insurance industry is also wrong to oppose the Affordable Care Act (ACA) by bankrolling the Republican repeal effort. The ACA expands coverage, ends the worst insurance company abuses, reduces health care costs, and reduces the federal deficit while building on the private insurance system.

The Republicans' relentless opposition to the law is a naked appeal to their extreme right-wing base and an attack on people already benefiting from it — millions of seniors, children, young adults, families and small businesses. It's time for AHIP to turn away from Republican politics and vigorously support implementation of the law.

The Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., will hear arguments Tuesday on contradictory rulings by two Virginia federal judges on attempts to invalidate the new health care law's requirement that everyone who can afford private insurance must buy it.

The encouraging news for those of us who support the law, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), is that the results so far are good: of the 31 lawsuits challenging the ACA in federal courts, only two judges have ruled against part or all of the law. Most of the other cases have been dismissed or are still wending their way through the lower courts. Of the five judges who have ruled on the merits, three have upheld the law.

In one of the Virginia cases, U.S. District Judge Norman Moon ruled that the individual responsibility provision, also known as the individual mandate, is a proper exercise of congressional authority under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.

Judge Moon is right: Congress clearly has the authority to regulate the health insurance market, including protecting consumers from insurance industry abuses and reducing costs for families, seniors and businesses. The best way to protect consumers and control costs is to make sure everyone has affordable health insurance, and that's what the ACA does.

As all the legal challenges wind through the courts, there have been several significant developments that provide important context for the litigation:

• Most states are proceeding at a good pace with implementation - including many of the 26 listed as plaintiffs in the Florida legal challenge now on appeal in the 11th Circuit. Virginia itself passed a law, signed by its Republican governor, declaring its intent to create a state exchange.

• The ACA is already making a huge difference in the lives of millions of Americans. For example, 600,000 young adults now have insurance thanks to the ACA requirement that they be allowed to enroll in their parents' workplace health plans. People now have zero co-pays for preventive services, children can no longer be rejected by insurers because of pre-existing conditions, and insurers must end lifetime limits on care. Seniors in the Medicare "donut hole" have discounts on prescription drugs, and 4 million of them received $250 checks last year. Small businesses are receiving job-creating tax credits for providing workplace coverage, and now more small businesses are offering coverage despite the slow economy.

• Contrary to their "repeal and replace" promise on the campaign trail, Republicans have failed to offer a replacement health care proposal of any kind. Instead they've obsessively worked to repeal and defund the ACA, a project that appears to have stalled out. Just last week GOP leaders threw up their hands and acknowledged the futility of their efforts.

• The Republicans spearheading the political and legal attacks on the law have demonstrated mind-blowing hypocrisy on the individual responsibility provision. While they've excoriated the mandate - and argued again and again that it violates the constitutional rights of every American - they've embraced a mandate in their Medicare privatization scheme, which the Republicans in the House voted for last month as part of their 2012 budget. The Republican plan ends Medicare as we know it and would devastate America's seniors and families. Ironically, it also requires that seniors buy private insurance in a way that's nearly identical to the insurance requirement in the ACA (although that's where the similarity to the ACA begins and ends).

The ACA lawsuits are part of a serious attack on the people who are benefiting from the law - millions of seniors, children, young people and families. The politicians who want to overturn the law can yammer on about the Constitution, but what they can't do is explain how taking away important protections and benefits is good for actual people.

We are confident the law will ultimately be upheld. The U.S. Supreme Court will have the final say, and it has corrected lower-court mistakes when the nation has enacted other historic laws like Social Security, the minimum wage law and the Voting Rights Act.

We also believe the American people will not allow the courts or the Congress to return us to the time when insurance companies could exclude people because of pre-existing conditions, drop people for getting sick, jack up rates when they please or let benefit caps force people with serious diseases into bankruptcy.

The two cases being heard Tuesday, just like the Florida challenge, are driven by partisan politics. The Republicans' obsessive efforts to repeal and defund the ACA reveal that this litigation is really about the Republican Party protecting health insurer profits at the expense of working and middle-class families - and about giving our health care back to the insurance companies.

If the Republicans have their way and privatize Medicare, it will put millions of seniors at the mercy of health insurance companies and force them to pay $39 trillion more for Medicare coverage than they would under existing law, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). That's why this is a massive windfall for insurers. The GOP budget plan will also shift trillions of dollars in costs onto America's seniors and families. When the program begins, new Medicare enrollees would have to pay at least $6,400 more each year out-of-pocket for private coverage equivalent to current Medicare benefits. And the average Medicare beneficiary's contribution to the cost of Medicare benefits would skyrocket from 25 percent under the existing system to an astonishing 68 percent in 2030, according to CEPR and the Congressional Budget Office.

The Republican plan will enrich insurance companies at the expense of consumers and actually increase the overall net cost of health care by $34 trillion over the next 75 years, the planning period Medicare trustees are required to use. The increased costs are because of the private health insurance industry's excessive profits, obscene CEO salaries and the costs of the bureaucracy it creates to deny care to consumers. These private plan administrative costs often eat up 20 or even 30 cents of every insurance premium dollar compared to Medicare's roughly 3 cents. And in the past few weeks it's become clear that the industry's profits keep going up as consumers are being crushed by ever-rising co-payments and deductibles.

The sheer waste of Medicare privatization is truly staggering. According to an eye-opening report by CEPR's David Rosnick and Dean Baker, the Republican plan will ultimately force seniors to pay $39 trillion more for health care through 2084 than if Medicare were left alone. That's equal to a tax of about $110,000 for every man, woman and child in the country.

What we ought to do is increase our efforts to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse instead of impoverishing seniors, wasting massive amounts of taxpayer funds and giving the insurance companies control of seniors' health care. That's what the Affordable Care Act does, along with other Medicare reforms within President Obama's deficit reduction proposal.

The Republican plan, drawn by Budget Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, picks winners and losers in a big way. The winners are big corporations, like the insurance companies and their Washington lobbyists who spend millions to maintain a stranglehold on health care and the Republicans in Congress. The losers are America's working and middle-class families.

The Republicans also give massive tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires like the Koch brothers. To pay for this, they make savage cuts to Medicaid that will destroy the economic security of 60 million people - seniors, people with disabilities, poor families and children. They eliminate Medicare as we know it, and make deep cuts to dozens of programs of services that support America's families, from Head Start to Pell grants that help kids go to college.

Eliminating Medicare, giving seniors vouchers designed to lag far behind actual health care costs, and handing seniors' health care to the insurance companies is just plain wrong. Significantly increasing overall health care costs, as the Republican plan will do, is also wrong.

The Medicare privatization plan is part of the GOP's larger attack on our country's shrinking middle class and the promise of the American Dream: that if you work hard you can expect to have a good job with good wages and benefits, to provide a better life for your children, and to retire with dignity.

Washington, D.C. – Health Care for America Now (HCAN), the nationwide coalition that led the successful fight for health reform, released the following statement from HCAN Executive Director Ethan Rome on the Republican budget proposal that would abolish Medicare and Medicaid:

“The Republicans have passed a 2012 budget proposal that is completely fraudulent, and everyone knows it. They call it the ‘Path to Prosperity,’ but it’s actually a path to poverty for America's seniors and the middle class. It's not a deficit-reduction plan, it's an assault on working families that lets the deficit stand while giving massive tax cuts to corporations and the super-rich by saddling seniors and middle-class families with thousands of dollars in new out-of-pocket costs.

“The GOP scheme to convert Medicaid funding into block grants is nothing more than a massive cost shift to the states that will force deep cuts that hurt seniors, children, people with disabilities and the working poor.

“No matter how much Speaker Boehner tries to spin the Republican plan to privatize Medicare as something else, it will eliminate guaranteed benefits people count on and shift huge out-of-pocket costs to seniors. The Republican plan will put nearly 60 million seniors at the mercy of private health insurance companies while handing over billions of dollars to the industry. While the Republicans have been obsessively focused on repealing the Affordable Care Act, attacking women's health care and making life sweeter for billionaires and millionaires, we’re 100 days into this session of Congress and they haven't done a single thing to create a single job.

“Their blueprint is not even a legitimate deficit reduction plan. Republicans acknowledge that their plan wouldn’t even balance the budget for another 30 years. Today's Republican vote is political theater when what this country needs is serious, responsible leadership.”

Read HCAN’s April 14 letter to Members of the House

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Health Care for America Now is a national grassroots coalition of more than 1,000 organizations in 46 states representing 30 million people. HCAN led the fight over the past two years to win passage of health reform and to keep Congress from being steamrolled by corporate special interests.

The Republican budget proposal released by House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin would give millionaires and political campaign contributors huge tax breaks while punishing seniors and working families. Ryan's extremist plan would decimate Medicare and Medicaid and terminate the Affordable Care Act, undermining the economic security of America's struggling middle class.

The Republican plan isn't based on the principle of shared sacrifice. There's no fairness. The idea that we solve big problems in this country by working together and sharing the burden can't be found. The super-rich and big corporations aren't asked to pitch in. Instead the Republicans manipulate the tax code so the rich get even richer. This budget blueprint changes the rules and reshapes this country in a breathtakingly dangerous way.

The Republican budget attacks every single one of us. Health care programs that everyone in this country depends on would be eviscerated. We'll all be covered by Medicare. Many of us have friends and relatives who receive Medicaid benefits, including millions in nursing homes. And the new health care law, the Affordable Care Act, has already made a huge difference in the lives of millions in its first year - and ultimately will directly touch 200 million of us.

The GOP's budget breaks the fundamental promise of this country: That if you work hard and play by the rules, you can take care of your family and retire with dignity and peace of mind.

How do the Republicans intend to reduce the deficit? They want seniors and hard-working families to pay more for health care and get less coverage.

The Republicans want to:

• End Medicare as we know it: The Republican budget eliminates traditional Medicare. It trades seniors' guaranteed health care benefits for vouchers that go directly to private insurance companies, risking their health and financial security when care is denied or premiums are raised. Under Ryan's plan, the value of the vouchers would rise more slowly than private premiums, forcing seniors to make up the difference and fall farther behind with each passing year. Those who can't afford it will be out of luck. The enrollment age would rise from 65 to 67.
• Give mammoth tax cuts to millionaires and big corporations. At a time when income disparities are as big as ever, the Republicans would widen the gap. This year U.S. corporations have taken the biggest profits in the nation's history and corporate taxes are at the lowest levels in generations (some corporations don't pay taxes at all!). But the Republicans want to cut another $1.5 trillion from the tax obligations of the wealthiest individuals and companies. This is a bonanza for corporate lobbyists and campaign contributors.
• Rip apart America's safety net. The Republicans want to convert Medicaid into state block grants that will shift costs to states, lower payments to hospitals and doctors, cost three million jobs, and impoverish seniors and their families by shifting to them the burden of paying for nursing homes and other essential long-term care services.
• Put insurance companies back in charge of our care. The plan would allow insurance companies to jack up our rates and deny our care whenever they want. The Republicans would do away with cost savings and consumer protections under the Affordable Care Act, like the ban on denying care to people with pre-existing conditions, the big savings on drug costs for seniors and new caps on how much of each premium dollar goes to overhead and profits. Repealing the ACA would keep 32 million uninsured people from gaining quality, affordable health coverage.
• Help Wall Street-run health insurance companies make record-breaking profits and pay their CEOs outrageous sums to deny people the care they paid for and need. The Ryan plan would hand over nearly 65 million seniors to the private health insurance industry. Private insurers selling Medicare Advantage plans already cost 11 percent more than the conventional Medicare program, the nation's most efficient health plan. There's no reason to think they could perform any more efficiently with 100 percent of Medicare beneficiaries.

The Ryan plan is an assault on the middle class that shifts billions of dollars to the big corporations and richest Americans. It robs future generations of the opportunity to do better than their parents and to share in the prosperity of a great nation. While the corporate lobbyists and campaign donors reap the benefits, the Republican plan makes the American Dream unachievable for the vast majority of people in this country.

Join the fight for these programs today. Click here to call your Member of Congress and tell them to vote NO on the Republican's extremist budget.

On Wednesday the Republicans on the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee are holding a "public" hearing about the Affordable Care Act (ACA) at the state capitol in Harrisburg, Penn. Except they're not there to listen to the public and people like Pennsylvania's Stacie Ritter, whose family had good insurance and still had to file for bankruptcy because of massive medical bills.

Stacie and her husband Ben had to pay huge fees for the treatments their twin little girls, Hannah and Madeline, needed when they were diagnosed with leukemia. At the same time, Ben had to take time from work to help care for the twins and their other children. It was too much and they went bankrupt. Thankfully Hannah and Madeline are doing well today.

Unfortunately, the Republicans don't care about people like the Ritters. They want to repeal the new law that would help prevent other families from going through the same thing that happened to Stacie's family. They even want to repeal one of the provisions Stacie is most grateful for - the one that requires insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions. That provision means Madeline and Hannah will always be able to get affordable health insurance despite their medical history.

The Republicans are in Pennsylvania on the first anniversary of this historic law to play politics and to grandstand. They've invited Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett and other partisan opponents of the law to testify. Not invited: ordinary members of the public. So it's not really a public hearing - it's a show trial, another act of political theater in the Republicans' relentless effort to repeal and undermine the new law. Just down the hall, Stacie and others are holding a reality-based hearing in the Capitol Rotunda to make sure the stories of average Pennsylvanians are heard, especially those already benefiting from the law's many cost savings and consumer protections.

Stacie Ritter's story is all too familiar. People finding coverage or claims denied. People being forced to pay more because of a pre-existing medical condition or being denied coverage outright. People getting stuck on hold for hours to get a simple issue resolved by phone. People running up against annual or lifetime coverage caps and unaffordable co-pays and deductibles that cause more than 900,000 medical bankruptcies a year. All the while, insurance company profits soar, and CEOs make millions. That's why Stacie joined Health Care for America now to fight for change.

The ACA is putting a stop to this madness. It ends the worst health insurance company abuses and protects our care. It provides cost savings, consumer protections and greater health care choices. It puts a check on out-of-control profits that fuel premium increases that are crushing families and small businesses.

The Republicans derisively call the ACA "Obamacare" and rail against the "government takeover of health care." They'd rather not tell the truth about what the law really does because that information does not help their case.

Here are the facts:

• Millions of seniors are receiving free preventive care, such as mammograms and colonoscopies, and relief from skyrocketing prescription drug prices, including $250 checks for people who reached the "donut hole" and a 50% discount on brand name drugs. The ACA has provided these savings while eliminating waste, fraud and abuse in the Medicare system.

• For small businesses, job-creating tax credits are available to help cover their employees. More small businesses are now providing coverage.
• Adult children can stay on their parents' health plans until they're 26, which provides much needed access to care and peace of mind (especially for the parents) in this tough economy.
• The ACA ends unconscionable abuses like dropping you because you fall ill or because you made a mistake in your paperwork. It bans the odious practice of denying your care or charging you more for having a pre-existing condition. It ends annual and lifetime caps on coverage.

• For the first time ever, the insurance companies are being held accountable, capping how much they can charge, limiting excessive profits and putting the brakes on bloated compensation for CEOs. Guaranteeing a good deal instead of a raw deal with our health insurance - that's what the ACA does.

The ACA is providing life-changing benefits, cost-savings and protections that are making a huge difference in people's lives right now.

The ACA is about more than health care. It's also about economic security for families struggling to make ends meet. We can't preserve and expand the middle-class if people have to worry about health care. People have enough to worry about with high unemployment, rising gas and food prices and keeping up with mortgage payments.

Instead of creating jobs and growing the economy, the Republicans are re-fighting the battles of the past and trying to take us back to the days when insurance companies had a stranglehold on our health care.

People like Stacie Ritter are insisting that we move forward. "This is America," she says. "I knew we could do better with our heath care than we've done in the past and I'm glad we have this law. We won't go back. We've got to move forward."

NOTE: Health Care for America Now has a chart that highlights the features of the Affordable Care Act and shows what the Republican repeal plan would do. You can download a printable, high-resolution version with citations here.

On Tuesday Meghan McCarthy wrote a story in the National Journal that asked, "Are GOP Leaders Going Soft on 'Obamacare?'" "Top tea partiers in Congress," she wrote, "openly worry about the commitment to defund the health care law."

Soft on "Obamacare." That's not exactly how I would term it. These tea party folks clearly have high standards for vigorous opposition. After all, in their brief time under the far-right leadership of Speaker John Boehner, the Republicans in the U.S. House have voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, defund it and eliminate all funding for life-saving health care services for women. They've launched several senseless investigations, and they obsessively and almost psychotically trash the new health care law using any microphone they can get near. When it comes to getting rid of "Obamacare," I'd say Speaker Boehner appears to be giving it his all.

But for "top tea partiers" like Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), that's not good enough. According to McCarthy, they've been "leading an effort to strip an estimated $105 billion in mandatory funding from the statute," but Bachmann "fears that the Republican leadership will try to placate the conservative base with empty gestures that leave the funding in place."

Talking about her Republican leaders in advance of Tuesday's budget extension vote, Bachmann explained: "I think there's going to be a fake appeasement with the Planned Parenthood thing and a fake appeasement with the 'Obamacare' thing."

What Bachmann means is that the House leaders set aside their efforts to defund civilization as we know it in order to get agreement on a short-term budget. That's why she was attacking her leaders, and possibly (and regrettably) used the word "appeasement" as a thinly veiled reference to Neville Chamberlain's foreign policy before World War II. Bachmann, as we all know, likes to make historical references, even when that means rewriting history as she did over the weekend, when she confused the role (in prepared remarks - twice!) that New Hampshire and Massachusetts played in the start of the Revolutionary War. Bachmann's explanation, by the way, was the best part: "So I misplaced the battles of Concord and Lexington by saying they were in New Hampshire. It was my mistake, Massachusetts is where they happened. New Hampshire is where they are still proud of it!" I love that.

Here's the thing: It's true that Bachmann and King are fanatical whack jobs who represent the hyper-extremists in the Republican House majority (like the 54 Republicans who voted against the budget bill on Tuesday because it didn't cut enough). But they're just plain wrong in saying that the relentless opposition to the Affordable Care Act by their leaders is inadequate. Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor are doing just fine trashing the health law and backing that up with legislative action.

If Bachmann and King want to criticize Boehner and other Republican leaders, they should dump on them for hiding behind partisan political rhetoric that obscures the negative impact that repealing the new health care law would have on America's families, seniors and small businesses - all of whom already are benefiting from the law's cost savings and consumer protections. Why don't Bachmann and King tell the truth about what it would mean for their constituents if the health care law was defunded and repealed - and urge Boehner to do the same? That would show that they're true to their principles.

For starters, the extremist Republicans could say that they want to take us back to the days when insurance companies could deny your care because you have a pre-existing condition, drop you for getting sick and jack up your rates whenever they felt like it. That's not so hard to say, and it's clearer than a bunch of political mumbo-jumbo about "Obamacare." Why not try a little "straight talk," the kind Sen. John McCain was so fond of before the 2008 Republican presidential nominee morphed from a maverick into a political Neanderthal during his tough Senate reelection campaign last fall?

Next week, to celebrate the first anniversary of the Affordable Care Act, thousands of people will be participating in events from coast to coast to highlight the benefits and protections of the new law, such as the ban on insurance companies denying coverage and care because of a pre-existing condition. Since the Republicans are against these kinds of consumer protections, why don't they just come out and say what they're really for and against?

The Republicans should tell cancer patients with crushing medical costs that the GOP wants to reinstate annual and lifetime benefit limits that will force them into bankruptcy and deny them the care they need. They should let young adults know they have to quit their parents' health plans while looking for a job in this tough economy. The Republicans should go door-to-door and tell thousands of seniors to cough up the $250 donut-hole checks the new law provided to help them buy prescription drugs. The Republicans should tell seniors they're ending the 50% discount on brand-name medicines and hold town hall meetings to let small businesses know they're taking away job-creating tax credits.

If the Republicans reach out to the public and tell the truth about repeal, we’ll all know they have the courage of their convictions. If the GOP’s leaders personally take away the insurance cards of children with chronic medical conditions, maybe that will even satisfy Representatives Bachmann and King that the GOP has not gone soft on “Obamacare.”

With the stalemate over his partisan over-reach in its 14th day, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is now wildly violating the most basic principle of governing: If you want to solve a problem, take the deal that gives you what you need, don't hold out for everything you want.

The workers have already agreed to pension and health care concessions. That's what Walker has said he needs. But he also wants to deny Wisconsin's public service employees their freedom to have a voice at work. The workers rightly have said they won't negotiate over their right to negotiate. Walker doesn't need that to solve the state's budget deficit.

The problem is that Scott just can't let go - and he's going too far. He insists on putting the interests of his billionaire backers like the Koch Brothers ahead of growing the economy and addressing the financial insecurity of America's working and middle-class families.

People in Wisconsin and across the country are fighting back with extraordinary intensity and resolve. More than 100,000 turned out in Madison to protest this weekend. Hundreds of thousands of people rallied from New York to Los Angeles, in every state capitol and most major cities to support Wisconsin's teachers, correction officers, firefighters, nurses, administrative assistants, sanitation workers, social workers and so many others. The 14 Democratic state senators who have courageously blocked proposed legislative action on the governor's proposal continue to stand firm in the face of daily threats. This is an organic and inspired national movement demanding an end to the attacks on America's middle class - and for good reason.

If Walker and the Republican extremists get their way, it will tear the fabric of our society and destroy the American Dream. They want to shrink the middle class instead of creating jobs to secure and strengthen our communities. They want to take money out of the pockets of working families and deny small businesses the customers they need to survive. They want to cut taxes for corporations and the super rich instead of helping middle-class families educate their children and make ends meet. Walker and the Republicans like him want to give even more power and wealth to the CEOs of the insurance companies, the banks and other big corporations that don't care about anything except making excessive profits at our expense.

Exhibit A: Buried in Walker's bill to strip public employees of their rights is a provision that would allow the state to sell or contract out management of state-owned power plants without the standard competitive bidding that saves taxpayers money and protects against political corruption. And who might benefit from this special interest legislation? The energy company owned by the billionaire Koch brothers.

Gov. Walker has a fine model for reckless, partisan behavior in Speaker of the House John Boehner. Boehner and the House Republicans are serving two masters: the corporate lobbyists in Washington and the extremist Tea Party Republicans who don't seem to care what damage they do to this country in the pursuit of their partisan goals. The Republican continuing resolution is a case in point. What they cut is as telling as what they don't in these times of "shared sacrifice." The Republicans don't roll back tax cuts for the very wealthy and tax breaks for big corporations like the oil companies.

Instead the Republicans make draconian cuts that hurt the elderly and families and do nothing to create jobs. They cut student loans for working and middle-class parents trying to send their kids to college, do away with Meals on Wheels for elderly shut-ins, and lay off food-safety inspectors. The Republicans reduce the number of law enforcement officers, whack K-12 education, and kick low-income pre-schoolers out of Head Start.

The Republicans' spending plan also defunds the Affordable Care Act, which eliminates the worst health insurance company abuses and frees families, seniors and small businesses from crushing health care costs and devastating denials of care. The GOP attacks health services for women by defunding Title X and Planned Parenthood.

The Republican spending plan will even slow economic growth, according to independent experts. That means fewer jobs, not more. Now the Republicans are proposing a short-term funding extension that is just as bad as what they've proposed for the rest of the year. It is designed to create an impasse with the Senate and could force a government shutdown if they don't reach agreement by March 4.

Walker has created a crisis in Wisconsin by his extremism, and Boehner is willing to shut down the federal government over his. I know they're both more interested in pleasing the corporate lobbyists than the people they were elected to represent, but Walker and Boehner have really gone too far.

Gov. Scott Walker's attack on Wisconsin's middle class and his plan to take away the rights of public service workers is wrong. It's certainly wrong for the governor to work for corporate special interests like the infamous Koch brothers instead of the people of Wisconsin. And his threat Tuesday of "dire consequences" was disingenuous and irresponsible, especially since his draconian attack on the freedom of employees to have a voice at work has nothing to do with balancing the state's budget.

It's time for the governor to stop fighting with public employees, put aside his partisan agenda and help Wisconsin move forward. The governor should work with the unions and both political parties and remember that this is not about winning a fight - it's about getting things done.

In Indiana, for example, that's what Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels has decided to do. Ideologically, Daniels and Walker are kindred spirits, and the Indiana governor is no friend of workers. But Daniels decided this is not the right time to declare war on workers. According to the Indianapolis Star, Daniels signaled Tuesday that "Republicans should drop the right-to-work bill that has brought the Indiana House to a standstill for two days and imperiled other measures."

Wisconsin's governor has created an unnecessary impasse. Gov. Walker has driven 14 Democratic state senators into hiding because it's the only way they can force a pause in the legislative process. He is staring out his office window at unprecedented protests by thousands of Wisconsinites from all walks of life. Recent polls show the public is not on his side. Everyone understands that Gov. Walker's claims about the state budget are a pretext to take away peoples' rights and shrink Wisconsin's middle class. This is no way to lead a state. The governor should work across party lines to solve this problem so Wisconsin lawmakers can move on to other issues - including the budget for the coming fiscal year.

The governor could end this crisis if he's willing to work with the unions and both political parties. As we all know, this crisis is not about the money and never was. To the extent that Wisconsin has a budget deficit, it is a problem of the governor's own making, thanks to tax breaks he just gave to corporations. The workers have already agreed to Gov. Walker's requests for concessions on pension and health care. But the governor won't budge - he continues to put his ideological agenda ahead of the people of Wisconsin. That's just plain wrong and makes little sense as a practical matter.

The governor is needlessly alienating Wisconsin's workers. I understand why the governor attacked his own work force of public-service employees in his first six weeks in office. Taking away collective-bargaining rights from all workers is an important agenda item for the big corporations and the extremists in his own political party. But this plan has backfired. The middle-class families of his state are turning against the governor. Of course people are angry. Giving tax breaks to corporations and the super rich while taking away the rights, income and benefits of middle-class families isn't fair. No state can afford this kind of strife when budget crises make "shared sacrifice" the phrase of the day. Shared means shared.

Gov. Walker should move Wisconsin forward instead of pursuing his partisan political agenda. There's no room for political games in a fragile economy. There are tough problems to solve, and that can't happen when politicians are playing politics with people's lives. Politicians like Gov. Walker shouldn't be declaring war on the middle class to appease their corporate backers. They should not talk about making "tough" decisions to reduce the standard of living for working families at the same time they increase the wealth of billionaires like the Koch brothers.

A right-wing corporate cabal funded by the Kochs is applying growing pressure on Walker and all Republicans to attack unions. Tomorrow, the Koch-led front group Americans for Prosperity will begin a Wisconsin TV and radio ad campaign to promote this assault on workers.

Now we're seeing exactly the same attacks in states like Ohio. Until these governors and politicians ask the corporations and the very rich to pay their fair share, they have no business asking the rest of us for anything.

You can join the fight — www.wearewisconsin.org.

Ethan Rome - Executive Director, Health Care for America Now

The battle of public employees for their rights in Wisconsin is about fairness, the preservation and expansion of the middle class and keeping the American Dream alive. In the face of a vicious Republican and corporate assault on the ability of workers to negotiate for a better life, Wisconsin's workers are fighting back. They're standing up for their right to collectively bargain and they're standing up for all of us.

The tenacity, courage and commitment of the protesters have been extraordinary. The community support the workers have received has been inspiring. The people of Wisconsin are making history by drawing a serious line in the sand against unbridled corporate power and Republican extremism.

Throughout our nation's history, workers and their unions have fought for better wages, benefits and scores of trailblazing workplace improvements. At the bargaining table, the ballot box, in the halls of Congress and wherever important policy decisions are made, unions have fought for greater opportunity and shared prosperity, for the real American dream (Rachel Maddow has a great segment about Wisconsin's labor history which you can watch here).

In the post World War II era, unionized jobs with good pay and decent health care and retirement benefits helped create and expand America's middle class. It was the promise of America: If you worked hard and played by the rules, you could get ahead. And your kids could do even better.

That promise — the American Dream — has been made possible by the strength of the American labor movement and the sacrifices of countless workers and their families.

Today, union membership is down, unemployment is up and the current generation of young people is the first in years to expect that they won't be as well off as their parents.

Enter Governor Scott Walker, Speaker of the U.S. House John Boehner, Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan and the rest of the Republicans who want an America run by and for the big corporations. Their agenda is to downsize government to dangerous levels, dismantle the public programs that keep our families safe and make our communities strong, export our jobs overseas and do whatever it takes to increase corporate profits and concentrate the nation's wealth into fewer and fewer hands.

These politicians are owned and operated by a powerful cabal of corporations and billionaires like the infamous Koch Brothers, who fund many right-wing front groups such as FreedomWorks who sent people to Madison from across the country this weekend to stage counter-protests.

These politicians and organizations are part of a nationwide effort to take away collective bargaining. They're also trying to take away the important cost-saving benefits and consumer protections of the Affordable Care Act. They want to privatize Social Security and eliminate Medicare as we know it. The want a government that's small enough to starve the poor, shrink the middle class and eliminate small businesses and big enough to regulate who we can love and marry. They want a government that looks the other way when oil companies recklessly drill offshore and mining firms operate without regard for the health and safety of their workers. And they want a government with enough reach to tell a woman, her doctor and her family what to do about private health care decisions.

We have a different vision of the world. As Paul Wellstone would often say, "We all do better when we all do better." We believe that work should be rewarded and workers treated with dignity and respect. We believe in an America where there is opportunity for everyone to achieve their potential and have fulfilling lives, including a secure retirement. We also believe in a robust government that does things we can't do ourselves to improve our collective quality of life. We believe in pitching in and helping each other out. The Republicans and their corporate sponsors believe in every man for himself — the "you're on your own" theory of government and life.

We also believe in unions. As Bob Creamer says in his very fine piece on this struggle, the right to form a union is "an American value." He adds, "The right to form a union is critical to a democratic society because it is the only way to assure that employers do not treat their employees as commodities."

Ground Zero

It's these different visions that the battle in Wisconsin is about, beginning with worker's most basic rights. That's why teachers, correction officers, firefighters, nurses, administrative assistants, sanitation workers, social workers and so many others have banded together like never before. As AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee has said, Wisconsin is "ground zero" for the rights of public employees to unionize.

"If they succeed in Wisconsin, the birthplace of A.F.S.C.M.E., they will be emboldened to attack workers' rights in every state," McEntee says.

As we all know by now, the fight in Wisconsin is not about the money. To the extent that Wisconsin has a budget deficit, it is a problem of the Governor's own making, thanks to tax breaks he just gave to corporations. In fact, the workers have already indicated their willingness to negotiate over legitimate budget issues. Meanwhile, the Governor won't budge — he continues to choose his ideological agenda over the people of Wisconsin.

As the New York Times explains, "In a year when governors across the country are competing to show who's toughest, no matter what the consequences, Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin stands out as the first to bring his State Capitol to a halt." The paper continues, "Like many governors, he wants to cut the benefits of state workers. But he also decided a budget crisis was a good time to advance an ideological goal dear to his fellow Republicans: eliminating most collective bargaining rights for public employees."

The Governor's plan is to take away nearly all of the collective bargaining rights of public employees, which would have no impact on the state budget. They would be barred from bargaining about anything except wages, and any pay increase they win would be limited by the consumer price index. Contracts would be limited to a year, and union dues could no longer be deducted from paychecks.

As President Obama noted, with considerable understatement on Wednesday, Walker's proposal "seems like an assault on unions."

At the center of the battle in Wisconsin are AFSCME, SEIU, the teachers (AFT and NEA), the AFL-CIO and many other labor and community organizations. These are the same groups — along with dozens of community, civil rights and faith groups and other unions such as the CWA, UAW and UFCW — that have also been key players in the coalition Health Care for America Now (HCAN) and its grassroots campaign to win (and now promote and defend) the new health care law. Without the power of labor — without the coalition of labor and community groups - we never would won the health care law (labor has also been central to many other victories over the last two years, beginning with the election of President Barack Obama).

"We Stood Up Straight" — The Memphis Strike

AFSCME is not unfamiliar with tough fights where the whole world was watching. In 1968, the sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, famously went on strike for better wages, benefits and working conditions and to get Mayor Loeb to recognize their union, AFSCME Local 1733. On April 3, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech, the last formal remarks he would give before being assassinated the next day. He was in Memphis that night to support the strikers, who had walked off the job 51 days earlier.

Taylor Rogers was one of the strikers. During the nearly 10 years I worked at AFSCME, I had the honor of working with Mr. Rogers at events where he told the story of the strike. Just like Wisconsin's protesters, the Memphis workers went on strike for all of us.

One of Rogers' recollections of the strike is captured in a 2002 article in AFSCME's national magazine.

Rogers remembers the Memphis organizing events as if they happened yesterday. In 1964, Rogers and his co-workers figured that if they had to pick up other people's garbage, they were going to be respected for doing it. So they began to organize.

In those segregated times, African Americans in the South who stood up and demanded justice were ridiculed and harassed. Mayor Henry Loeb and the city council, with the backing of the white community, ignored the workers' union representation with AFSCME.

In February 1968, a crisis erupted: The accidental activation of a packer blade in the back of a garbage truck fatally crushed workers Echol Cole and Robert Walker. "That's when the men said, 'We're tired and we ain't going to take anymore,'" recalls Rogers. "If you bend your back, people can ride it. But if you stand up straight, people can't ride your back. And that's what we did.

"We stood up straight."

The workers in Wisconsin are standing up straight in a big way. Let us all stand with them. There are lots of web pages where you can go to get updates and help. Here's one: www.wearewisconsin.org.

Washington, D.C. – Health Care for America Now (HCAN), the nationwide coalition that led the successful fight for health reform, released the following statement from HCAN Executive Director Ethan Rome on efforts by Republicans in Congress to defund the Affordable Care Act (ACA):

The defunding bill exposes the Republican budget proposal for the anti-consumer sham that it is. Instead of putting America back to work, the GOP wants to take away important cost savings and consumer protections from America’s families, seniors and businesses. The GOP wants to take us back to the days when insurance companies could deny your care because you have a pre-existing condition, drop you for getting sick and jack up your rates whenever they felt like it.

Republican House members should tell the truth about what they’re doing. They should tell cancer patients with crushing medical costs that the GOP wants to reinstate annual and lifetime benefit limits that will force them into bankruptcy and deny them the care they need. They should let young adults know they have to quit their parents' health plans. Each Republican member of Congress should go door to door in their districts and tell thousands of seniors to cough up the $250 donut-hole checks the new law provided to help them buy prescription drugs. The Republicans should tell seniors they’re ending the 50% discount on brand-name medicines.

They should have town hall meetings to let small businesses know they’re taking away job-creating tax credits and to tell the parents of sick children who finally got coverage because of the ACA that the Republicans are canceling their insurance.

The Republicans don’t have a legislative agenda on health care – they have an obsession, and they appear to be incapable of getting over it. Meanwhile, the GOP isn’t doing a single thing to create jobs, and that’s what America needs – not another health care debate.

###

Health Care for America Now is a national grassroots coalition of more than 1,000 organizations in 46 states representing 30 million people. HCAN led the fight over the past two years to win passage of health reform and to keep Congress from being steamrolled by corporate special interests.

The House Republicans seem to be saying yes. Apparently, taking away women's access to reproductive health services is an important way to create jobs and get the economy moving again.

That may explain the urgency of Rep. Mike Pence's disgraceful legislation to defund Planned Parenthood and other providers by stripping them of Title X family-planning funding, since creating jobs is the stated priority of the Republicans in Congress. The Republicans also want to take away the new cost-savings and consumer protections in the new health care law, the Affordable Care Act, because this too will apparently create jobs. This is the same GOP that wants to undermine the new law, including re-opening the abortion compromise that unambiguously maintained the prohibition against federal funds paying for abortions. This is all so important to the Republicans that they made one of the bills relating to this issue H.R. 3, among the very first taken up by the House in the 112th Congress. No wonder people are asking Speaker John Boehner, "When are the jobs?"

The GOP is gripped by two obsessions - rolling back the clock on women's health services and giving control of our health care back to the insurance companies. They want to take us back to the days when insurance companies could deny your care because you have a "pre-existing condition," drop you for getting sick and jack up your rates whenever they feel like it. They want to return to the time when being a woman was a pre-existing condition. They want to entirely eliminate family planning funds. When it comes to health care in general and women's health in particular, the Republicans don't have a legislative agenda to move forward - just a fixation on tearing things down and moving backwards.

Meanwhile, the Republicans aren't doing a single thing to create jobs. They're too busy trying to put the insurance companies back in charge of our health care. They're too busy going after vital health care institutions like Planned Parenthood. They're too busy trying to get between a woman and her doctor. That is especially galling because the insurance companies have made decisions about our health care for decades. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, those days are over. Now the House Republicans want to be the ones making those decisions for women. This is nothing short of a war on women and their health care. And it's happening in state capitals as well as Washington, D.C.

This hypocrisy is extreme, even by the standards the Republicans have set since taking control of the House. Take Speaker Boehner's less-than-authentic comments on the matter of the President's religion and birthplace. He has said again and again that he doesn't want to tell the American people "what to think" - or tell members of his own caucus to stop lying about these basic matters of fact. The Speaker's line is offensive - a transparent wink and a nod to those who continue spreading lies about President Obama to intentionally stoke the flames of the far right.

If Boehner is not willing to "tell people what to think" about something so important and basic as the legitimacy of the president of the United States, why is it okay to tell women and their doctors what to do?

Seriously, enough already.

Rick Scott made his fortune in health care by exploiting patients and the federal government as CEO of the world's largest health care company. As governor of Florida, he's now taking away cost-saving health care benefits and patient protections from millions. But this time he's an elected official who swore to uphold the law.

Since an extremist federal judge issued a partisan (and poorly reasoned) opinion finding the Affordable Care Act (ACA) unconstitutional, Scott has been pretending the law doesn't apply to his state. Apparently Scott doesn't care that the judge is only one of four U.S. district judges who have ruled on the constitutionality of the law and that two of them have upheld it. It doesn't seem to matter to Scott that the ACA is the law of the land.

Whether it's a political stunt or the act of an extremist ideologue, Scott is hurting real Floridians in concrete ways, including millions of people with private health insurance or Medicare benefits. He's taking away a law that ends the worst insurance company abuses and frees families, seniors and businesses from crushing health care costs and devastating denials of care.

Scott's brazen disregard for the law is no surprise. He's the former CEO of Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp and was forced to resign in 1997. That happens to be when the company pleaded guilty to a litany of criminal and civil charges, including lying to the government about how sick patients were so the company could collect bigger fees from the taxpayers. As a result, Columbia/HCA agreed to pay $1.7 billion in fines and penalties — the largest health care fraud settlement in U.S. history.

Scott's refusal now to put the new health care law into effect in Florida has serious consequences. He says it's about the people of Florida, but his action is really about giving control of our health care back to the insurance companies.

Scott should tell his constituents the truth about what he's doing — taking away dozens of cost savings and consumer protections from Florida consumers. He should tell people that he wants to return to the days when insurance companies could deny your care because you have a preexisting condition, drop you for getting sick and jack up your rates whenever they wanted.

Scott should tell cancer patients with devastating medical costs that he wants to reinstate annual and lifetime benefit limits that will force them into bankruptcy instead of providing the care they need. While he's at it the governor can let young adults know they have to quit their parents' health plans. He should go door to door and tell thousands of seniors to cough up the $250 donut-hole checks the ACA provided them to buy prescription drugs — and tell them he's ending the 50% discount they get on brand-name medicines. Scott should call the parents of sick children who finally got coverage because of the ACA and tell them he's canceling their insurance. He should also tell small businesses he's taking away their job-creating tax credits.

Since Scott is independently wealthy, why doesn't he take out ads in all of Florida's local newspapers telling families, seniors, college students and small businesses to start worrying about their health care again? He could also confess that as a rich man he has no idea what it means to be pushed around by health insurance companies or overwhelmed by spiraling costs.

Rick Scott's decision to buck the law is reckless, wrong and morally repugnant. Scott's not alone. Extremists in some states, such as Iowa, Utah and Wyoming, are following his lead, but thankfully a majority of states are appropriately moving forward with implementation–even states like Georgia, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin, which are part of the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the law.

It's OK to challenge a federal law. It's not OK to unilaterally refuse to follow it. What Rick Scott is doing is unconscionable.

Washington, DC – Health Care for America Now (HCAN), the nationwide coalition that led the successful fight for health reform, released the following statement from HCAN Executive Director Ethan Rome on plans for the U.S. Senate to vote on repeal of the Affordable Care Act:

“If Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans are serious about repealing the Affordable Care Act, they should tell their constituents the truth about the cost-savings and consumer protections they want to take away. McConnell should go door to door in Kentucky and tell thousands of seniors to cough up the $250 donut-hole checks they received from the new health care law to buy their prescription drugs.

Senator Jim DeMint should telephone South Carolina parents of sick children who finally got coverage and tell them their insurance is now canceled. Senator Jon Kyl should tell Arizona cancer patients with backbreaking medical costs that he wants to reinstate annual and lifetime benefit limits that will force them into bankruptcy instead of getting them the care they need. Senator John Cornyn should tell parents in Texas they have to drop their adult children from their health insurance and just take their chances. Every Republican senator who supports repeal should take out ads in their local newspapers admitting the real impact of this vote and tell families, seniors and small businesses to start worrying about their health care again.

“Senate Republicans should personally explain to their constituents why their political games will take away a law that ends the worst insurance company abuses and liberates families, seniors and businesses from crushing health care costs and devastating denials of care. This isn’t a theoretical debate or a symbolic vote. Senate Republicans are voting to take away real protections that are helping millions of people right now. They should have the courage to look their constituents in the eye and tell them they support doing away with dozens of cost-saving measures and other consumer protections.”

##

Health Care for America Now is a national grassroots coalition of more than 1,000 organizations in 46 states representing 30 million people. HCAN led the fight over the past two years to win passage of health reform and to keep Congress from being steamrolled by corporate special interests.

You’ve probably read by now that Judge Vinson did the expected: The judge gave Republican governors and attorneys general what they wanted, a decision that advances the GOP’s extremist agenda to return control of our health care to the insurance companies. This is judicial activism on steroids. Fortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court will have the final say on the legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act, and it has corrected such lower-court mistakes when other major laws like Social Security, the minimum wage law and the Voting Rights Act were passed. Two other federal district judges have already upheld the new health care law.
Congress clearly has the authority to regulate the health insurance market, including protecting consumers from insurance industry abuses and reducing costs for families, seniors and businesses. The best way to protect consumers and control costs is to make sure everyone has health insurance, and that’s what the Affordable Care Act does.

With consumers already benefiting from the law, this litigation is really about the Republican Party protecting health insurance company profits at the expense of working families. The Republican politicians who marched in lockstep to bring this suit aren’t really interested in the new law’s individual-responsibility rule. This lawsuit is just another tactic in the Republican Party’s campaign to give our health care back to the insurance companies no matter what the cost.

The American people will not allow the courts or the Congress to bring us back to the time when insurance companies could exclude people because of pre-existing conditions, drop people for getting sick, or let benefit caps force people with serious diseases into bankruptcy.

Coalition Decries ‘Judicial Activism on Steroids’

Washington, DC – Health Care for America Now (HCAN), the nationwide coalition that led the successful fight for health reform, released the following statement from HCAN Executive Director Ethan Rome on U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson’s ruling today in a lawsuit challenging the Affordable Care Act:

“Judge Vinson gave Republican governors and attorneys general what they wanted, a decision that advances the GOP’s extremist agenda to return control of our health care to the insurance companies. This is judicial activism on steroids. Fortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court will have the final say on the legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act, and it has corrected such lower-court mistakes when other major laws like Social Security, the minimum wage law and the Voting Rights Act were passed. Two other federal district judges have already upheld the new health care law.

“Congress clearly has the authority to regulate the health insurance market, including protectingconsumers from insurance industry abuses and reducing costs for families, seniors and businesses. The best way to protect consumers and control costs is to make sure everyone has health insurance, and that’s what the Affordable Care Act does.

“With consumers already benefiting from the law, this litigation is really about the Republican Party protecting health insurance company profits at the expense of workingfamilies. The Republican politicians who marched in lockstep to bring this suit aren’t really interested in the new law’s individual-responsibility rule. This lawsuit is just another tactic in the Republican Party’s campaign to give our health care back to the insurance companies no matter what the cost.

“The American people will not allow the courts or the Congress to bring us back to the time when insurance companies could exclude people because of pre-existing conditions,drop people for getting sick, or let benefit caps force people with serious diseases into bankruptcy.”

##

While noting that "anything can be improved" and that he would welcome ideas to improve the bill he signed into law last March, Obama offered only two subjects that might warrant renewed attention — and one of those is sure to set off alarms among consumer advocates and trial lawyers, though changes seem unlikely.

read more

Reporter Joe DiStefano quotes a vice president at APCO Worldwide — one of DC's most powerful and influential PR firms — in response to questions about my book, Deadly Spin. Throughout the book, I disclose the previously secretive work APCO did for the health insurance industry to manipulate public opinion on health care reform, in part by trying to scare people away from a movie, Michael Moore's 2007 documentary "Sicko".

The surprising gem in the Inquirer piece was that APCO VP Bill Pierce essentially agreed with me. He acknowledged that interest-funded pressure groups "are all over the place" in Washington. "That's how everybody exists here," Pierce said.

read more

CONNECTICUT

Below is a photo from our event in Connecticut organized by HCAN Partner Connecticut Citizen Action Group (CCAG)

FLORIDA

Orlando–Report from HCAN Partner Organize Now

Orlando event targeting Webster had nearly 30 people in attendance from Organize Now, AFSCME, FLARA, FL Chain, JWJ, OFA and more. Fox 35 and Channel 13 both attended the event in front of the local Chamber of Commerce. Speakers included 2 folks who had benefited from health care reform and organizational speakers. At the end of the press conference everyone started calling Webster's office. His office was clearly concerned about the immediate calls and asked folks why they were all calling at once-was it on tv or an email or radio. Calls continued throughout the day.

Tampa-Report from HCAN Partner FCAN

Event coverage here: The Ledger: Residents Ask Ross to Support Health Care

MAINE

Report from HCAN Partner Maine People's Alliance

We had a good turnout in the snow to rally in support of the Affordable Care Act. The “Rally to Save Healthcare” asked our new Governor and Attorney General to stop wasting our time and money by signing on to repeal our care, thanking  Representatives Pingree and Michaud for their support of the ACA, and asking our state legislature to work towards implementation that will cover the most Maine people possible.

Watch video here: Rally to Save health Care

Media Coverage so far:

Maine Health Reform Supporters Rally Against Repeal

Non-profits rally in favor of health care law

AP: Maine rally held to support nat'l health care law

MICHIGAN

Report from Michigan Citizen Action

Around 40 people prayed outside of Congressman Upton's office.  10 personal letters delivered to Ed Sackely, District Director.  Because of new security, letters and people met with Ed one-by-one.  Kalamazoo Gazette article in the link below.  Linda did WMUK interview from 7:33 - 7:40.

Watch video from the event here

Health-care reform supporters hold vigil outside U.S. Rep. Fred Upton's office on eve of House vote

MINNESOTA

Report from HCAN Partner Take Action Minnesota

Our MOC letter attached and we placed the following Op-Ed in the press today, by TakeAction board member. Thank you Liz Doyle

MinnPost- Republicans have it backwards on the jobs effect of health-care reform

NEVADA

Report from HCAN Partner PLAN

The Heckuva Deal Donut Hole bake sale went well. Several volunteers from PLAN, Americans United, and our coalition partners spoke to over 150 senior citizens at the Flamingo Senior Center in Joe Heck’s district (pic attached). Not one senior wanted to buy back their donut hole for $250 but we did give away 6 dozen donut holes along with handouts on ACA repeal targeted to seniors. We also logged 42 calls to Heck’s office made through the cell phones we brought to the event.

Additionally, we sent out action alerts statewide as did several of our coalition partners (Americans United, ProgressNow, and the SEIU) and will continue phone banking and mobilizations today.

The press was only radio phoned-in interview and mention on noon hour news (waiting for clips to become available), with a couple of outlets interested in doing a follow up story after the vote happens.

NORTH DAKOTA

Report from HCAN Partner NDPeople.org

State Capitol news conference challenging new Rep. Rick Berg on the repeal of ACA yesterday. Speakers did great! Media were the two TV stations (NBC and CBS) and North Dakota Public Radio. The reporter, from Forum Communications which has four daily papers and a bunch of TV stations, asked for the news release.

OHIO

Report from HCAN Partner Progress Ohio

Marianne Steger, from AFSCME Ohio Council 8 speaks to Steve Cheek, Staff Assistant, for Congressman Steve Stivers in the lobby of his district office.

Ohio Health Care Coalition Deliver Petitions To Ohio Congressional District Offices

ProgressOhio Community Blog:

By Denise Gastesi on January 19, 2011 9:49

Ohio Consumers Ask Congressmen Stivers To Side With Hard-Working Families, Not Big Insurance Companies

Tuesday, a delegation of leaders from various groups which are part of an Ohio Coalition of Health Care For America Now (HCAN), and constituents which led the national fight to pass the Affordable Care Act (ACA), delivered petitions to Congressman Stivers district office in Columbus to discuss his position on repealing the new law, which protects consumers from the worst insurance company abuses.

A Health Care Reform Repeal Bill was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives. The bill would eliminate provisions of the new law that are already benefiting consumers in the 15th Congressional District, effectively taking away no-cost preventive care for 77,000 seniors in Medicare, and 65,500 young adults would lose their insurance coverage through their parents' health plans sometimes just after they finish school and as they are looking for a job.

With the Health Care Repeal bill expected to be voted on in Congress this week, simular events are being held in Ohio at other congressional district offices. Constituents delivered petitions to Speaker Boehner's office in West Chester Tuesday and groups are organizing constuents to meet at Fountain Square today to deliver petitions to Rep. Steve Chabot's Office in Cincinnati today.

Online petitions were also sent to Rep. Renacci's office in the 16th Congressional District as well as to Rep. Johnson in OH-8.

From Left to Right: Marianne Steger, from AFSCME Ohio Council 8, Betty Thomas, Retiree coordinator AFSCME Ohio Council 8, Norm Wernet, Ohio Alliance for Retired Americans, and Lonnie Blackwell the president of our retirees chapter 1184 (20,000 AFSCME members across Ohio).

OCHC Statehouse Press Conference 1-19-2011

Some of the stories in the press conference below, came from the ProgressOhio e-mail that was sent out asking for health care stories.

OREGON

Report from HCAN Partner Oregon Action

We had a great action today in Medford, OR.  We had 40 folks at the Medford Library for a press/ community education rally.  Speaker included leaders from SEIU, Rev Bill McDonald from the faith community and Oregon Action and 3 stories from people effected by repeal.  There were 3 tv stations ( KOBI, KTVL and KDRV).  Additionally we had a story in the Mail Tribune announcing the event yesterday Jan 18.  There we two pre stories on KOBI which included a wonderful 5 minute interview with Michelle Glass, young Oregon Action leader. Everyone signed a letter to Rep Greg Walden and we announced our next HCAN meeting for Feb 22.

We had a lot of spirit and willingness to continue to be an organized force for health care progress.

PENNSYLVANIA

From HCAN partners PUP, Action United and Penn Action

Coverage from Tuesday's PA Events:

Post Gazette: Vote expected today on health care repeal

The Tribune-Democrat: Critz, Shuster split on health care

Public News Service: PA Mom Testifies about Healthcare Reform in D.C. Today

Lebanon Event

Here is the report from the event in Lebanon. We had about 20 people attend. We had Jake Long regional co director from the Harrisburg Labor Council Speak, Rev Dan Donomoyer and Bobbie Warshaw a Medicaid recipient talked about the benefits she received. There was also TV there and we are still looking for the link.

Lebanon Daily News - Ralliers: No to health care repeal

Scranton, PA Event

Lackawanna County Courthouse, Scranton PA

In addition to these events, Penn Action recruited Stacie Ritter, a woman with twins who have a pre-existing condition, to come to DC and be part of Speaker Pelosi's hearing to highlight people impacted by ACA repeal.  Stacie got great coverage all over the country including the story below.

Public News Service-PA

January 18, 2011

PA Mom Testifies about Healthcare Reform in D.C. Today

LANCASTER, Penn. - A Pennsylvania woman whose family was driven to bankruptcy after her twin four-year-old daughters were diagnosed with leukemia, is testifying on Capitol Hill today (Tuesday). Staci Ritter says thw girls' medical treatment has been very costly, and the bills piled up when an insurance company refused to pay for some of it.

As the U.S. House of Representatives gears up to vote on whether to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act, Ritter's message to lawmakers is that needs to remain intact – to protect families like hers, who are dealing with catastrophic illnesses.

"I'm afraid that if they repeal the mandate, that will enable insurers to be able to deny children – like mine, who have pre-existing conditions – health care."

Ritter says the family's situation became more serious after her husband's company signed on with a new insurance carrier, and problems emerged with their daughters' coverage.

"My children are expensive. Anybody with a pre-existing condition is a liability, they'll openly admit it – so, what do we do to protect these people?"

Ritter says she's fearful of a repeal of health care reform, not just because of the impact it could have on her daughters today.

"Each time they pick away at it, they take away something that's protecting my children and their future; protecting them from discrimination, protecting them from being able to afford insurance to begin with."

She will testify before the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, part of the House Democratic Caucus. Her story turns out better than some, but Ritter says that's only because she went after the insurance company publicly and was able to come to a settlement. Recently, several lawmakers who favor repealing the Affordable Care Act, including new House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), released a report entitled "ObamaCare: Budget Busting, Job-Killing Health Care Law."

TENNESSEE

Report Back from Tennessee Citizen Action

State Capitol Rally To Fight Repeal Of Health Care Reform (WTVF News channel 5)

Middle Tenn. voices heard on health care repeal (WKRN News 2)

Tennessee Report: TNCA Urges Abandonment of Federal Health Care Law Repeal & Resistance Efforts

Tennessee Report: Reform v. Repeal; Mary & Co v. Mae & Co

Memphis Commercial Appeal: Tennessee health care reform backers cite benefits - Urge lawmakers to leave federal plan alone

WASHINGTON

Report from WA MSA

Coverage of Main Street Alliance members in the Vancouver Columbian yesterday.

Health care debate regains center stage - Herrera Beutler supports GOP repeal push

By Howard Buck Columbian Staff Reporter

Originally published January 18, 2011 at 4:23 p.m., updated January 18, 2011 at 7:25 p.m.

Photo by Steven Lane

Local business owner Don Orange speaks about health care reform at a press conference staged by Organizing for America at Vancouver Marketplace on Tuesday.

WEST VIRGINIA

Report from West Virginia Citizen Action Group

WVCAG and partners held a 2PM press conference at the state capitol ahead of the vote to repeal ACA. Press covering the event were: TV 13 (CBS); WV News Service (radio); Charleston Gazette & Daily Mail (print)

Speakers were:

Gary Zuckett, WV Citizen Action Group
Perry Bryant, WV for Affordable Health Care
WV Senator Dr. Ron Stollings, Chair HHR Committee
WV Senator Dr. Dan Foster, member HHR Committee
Renate Pore, WV Center On Budget & Policy

WISCONSIN

Report from HCAN Partner Citizen Action of Wisconsin

Press from "No Repeal" action at Rep. Paul Ryan's office, 1/18:

WDJT TV 58 (CBS) Milwaukee (January 18, 2011) Wisconsin Joins Health Care Reform Fight

WISN TV 12 (ABC) Milwaukee (January 18, 2011) Interview with Brian Rothgery on repeal action at Paul Ryan's office (no link available)

WTMJ TV 4 (NBC) Milwaukee (January 18, 2011) Health Care Rally Outside Rep. Ryan's Office

Wisconsin Radio Network (January 18,  2011) Rallying against repeal

WRJN Radio 1400 AM Racine (January 18, 2011) 4:05 PM news break (podcast)

Racine Journal-Times (January 18, 2011) Protest outside Paul Ryan's office

Photos from Racine Journal Times picked up by AP:

Atlanta Journal Constitution (January 18, 2011) Congress tones down the rhetoric after shootings

Deseret News (Salt Lake City) (January 18, 2011) Congress tones down the rhetoric after shootings

The Republic (Columbus, IN) (January 18, 2011) Congress tones down the rhetoric after shootings

Christian Science Monitor (January 18,  2011) Health-care reform: How Democrats plan to crash House GOP's repeal party

Arizona Daily Star (January 18, 2011) Bid to repeal health law goes on, but with civil tone

News Times (Danbury, CT) (January 18, 2011)

MySanAntonio.com (January 18, 2011) Congress tones down the rhetoric after shootings

WASHINGTON, DC

Rally & Visibility Outside the Capitol yesterday.

Stacie Ritter's story was told in about 60 television markets across the country yesterday thanks mostly to NBC affiliates that picked up a Washington report on the event.

Stacie and her daughters are shown above testifying that repeal would mean her daughters would be at risk of losing their health coverage because of pre-existing conditions. Several stations ran the story more than once.

Just one day after the Republican Party voted to take away benefits from consumers and revive the insurance companies’ stranglehold on health care, industry leader UnitedHealth Group said its full-year profit jumped 21% to $4.6 billion in 2010. “Nothing demonstrates more clearly why the Republicans are so bent on undermining the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and why the House voted yesterday to repeal it,” said Ethan Rome, executive director of Health Care for America Now (HCAN), the 1,000-member coalition that led the fight for the new health care law. Analysts are expecting announcements of strong profit growth from other health insurance companies in the next few weeks.

“The Republicans’ reckless repeal plan will put insurance companies back in charge of our health care, restore the ‘anything-goes’ premium-rate hikes that are crushing consumers and businesses and raise the federal budget deficit to heights never before seen,” Rome said. “The health insurance industry is getting what it paid for in the 2010 elections – a free hand to do anything to make obscene profits. The GOP’s repeal vote was about letting the insurance companies off the hook and taking away important consumer benefits that matter to real people, like the ban on denying care to people with pre-existing conditions, big savings on drug costs for seniors and new caps on how much of each premium dollar goes to overhead and profits.”

UnitedHealth, a bellwether for the industry, this morning reported $4.6 billion in profit last year, up from $3.8 billion the year before. Last year UnitedHealth spent 80.6 percent of its premium revenue on actual medical care, a far lower ratethan in 2009. At the same time, insurers have been pursuing huge rate increases across the nation.

Wall Street knows that the ACA is likely to curb profits at many insurance companies in 2011, so the industry is especially interested in repealing new rules that cap how much premium money insurers may use for executive pay, profits and administration. That would explain why Congressman John Carter (R-Tex.), the Republican conference secretary, has pledged to block those rules.

Empowered by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, corporate-backed groups intent on the repeal of the health care law spent enormous sums to elect pro-repeal candidates, according to a new study by People for the American Way. The industry also fought the law by funneling $86 million to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce last year and spent more than $769 million on lobbyists in the past four years. It isn’t known yet how much insurers gave to other major front groups. The Republicans have also hired former insurance industry lobbyists into key staff roles, including Julie Goon, a former lobbyist with the industry’s trade group, in a senior role with the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Health Care for America Now launched a multifaceted counterattack against the Republican repeal plan this week that included:

· 42 events in 23 states, garnering significantmedia coverage. Click here for photos and clips.

· Nearly 20,000 constituent phone calls to House Republicans’ offices.

· An online anti-repeal advertising campaign that totaled more than 2.3 million impressions.

· Coverage by 60 television stations of HCAN advocate Stacie Ritter’s story about fighting for coverage for her twin daughters after their cancer treatment.

· Publication by Ethan Rome of a column in Huffington Post that included a graphic comparison of the ACA and repeal.

· An anti-repeal demonstration on Capitol Hill before the vote on Wednesday.

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Health Care for America Now is a national grassroots coalition of more than 1,000 organizations in 46 states representing 30 million people. HCAN led the fight over the past two years to win passage of healthreform and to keep Congress from being steamrolled by corporate special interests.

The extremists went wild. Rumors swept across the land. Some Tea Party types claimed the bill was 10,000 pages. Slate called the explosive stack-of-paper obsession "peculiar." Ultimately, the New York Times set the record straight: "In the original version," the Times said, "H.R. 3590 as passed by the Senate on Dec. 24, 2009, ran to some 2,400 pages, although with a very large font, triple spacing and huge left and right margins." The newspaper went on to explain that, "With normal margins the document probably would shrink to about 500 pages or so." Which meant the bill was not really that long when compared to other major bills, such as the financial reform law and past budget deals.

In the November mid-term elections, the Republicans ran on a platform of change, and change is what we got. Not only will the House Republicans vote to repeal the new health care law this week, they're going to do so with a bill that's only two pages long.

This is a triumph of conciseness, a 247-word beacon of brevity. The low word-count works especially well for the GOP, given the party's unfinished "repeal and replace" campaign pledge. The Republicans addressed repeal, but they haven't quite gotten to the "replace" part. That, we're told, is a work in progress, and the question is being referred to various House committees to kick around for months.

In Sunday's Washington Post, reporter Amy Goldstein noted that the Republican repeal vote is "the prelude to a two-pronged strategy that is likely to last throughout the year, or longer." Great. Just what we need — another interminable debate on health care when the Republicans ought to be focusing on bipartisan solutions to create jobs. Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), the new House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman, said it "may take time" for the GOP to develop a health care plan. Upton, who has been in Congress since 1987, has had only 24 years to come up with some health care ideas of his own. Instead, he hired Julie Goon, the former top lobbyist for the health insurance industry's biggest trade group, as his special adviser.

I'm not sure what the Republican "replace" plan is (or how many pages it will be), but I know their two-page repeal bill is a bad deal for America's families, seniors and small businesses.

The Republican repeal bill will take away dozens of benefits and important consumer protections that are making a real difference in peoples' lives right now. When the Republicans vote for repeal, they'll be taking away people's newly won freedom from fear of insurers denying their care, dropping them when their sick and imposing double-digit premium hikes with impunity. They'll be booting young adults off their parents' health plans. They'll be telling seniors they have to pay back the $250 donut hole checks they received to help buy prescription medications and give up their new 50% discount on brand-name drugs. The Republican repeal plan will force nearly 900,000 American families a year into bankruptcy because of huge medical bills. And it will take job-creating tax credits away from small businesses.

Speaker John Boehner and the Republicans don't want the public to know the truth about the Affordable Care Act and what their repeal plan will take away from America's consumers. And you can bet the debate about repeal will be filled with misleading information from Boehner and the new Republican majority. To help folks see beyond the rhetoric, Health Care for America Now made a chart that tells the truth. You can read and download a printable, high-resolution version with citations here and below.

Click here to download the above as a printable fact sheet with citations.

The rhetoric of repeal is just a smoke screen to obscure the real objective of the “repeal and replace” caucus: to preserve the sections of the law that big insurance and its business allies like and strip out the regulations and consumer protections they don’t like.

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“Today, the health insurance industry got what it paid for in the 2010 elections, a Republican majority determined to let theinsurance companies off the hook and kill the new law’s strong consumer protections, such as the ban on denying sick people care. This law is already making a real difference in the lives of millions of Americans by stopping health insurers from denying care, dropping people when they’re sick and jacking up rates anytime they please. The Republicans have scheduled a fast-track repeal vote next week to satisfy their extremist Tea Party base and to pay back the health insurance companies that funded their election campaigns.

“At the same time Speaker Boehner railed sanctimoniously against ‘fast legislating’ and called for ‘allowing additional amendments and open debate,’ he was preparing to skip the usual legislative processes and rush the repeal vote. Boehner said he and his party were “humbled” by the American people, but it’s hubris that’s driving the Republicans’ reckless effort to rush a vote to give our health care back to the insurance companies.

“What do the Republicans want to replace the new law with? Nothing. They're referring that question to House committees that will deliberate for months and play political football with our lives and health.

“Repeal means letting the insurance companies run roughshod over consumers, deny our care and raise our rates with impunity. When the Republicans vote for repeal on Jan. 12, they’ll be telling seniors to pay back the $250 donut hole checks they received to help buy prescription drugs. They’ll be booting young adults off their parents’ health plans. And they’ll be taking away the American people’s newly won freedom from the fear of bankruptcy caused by crushing medical bills. We’re finally getting the insurance companies off our backs and the first thing the Republicans want to do is let them off the hook.”

Health Care for America Now today launched an online petition to urge Republicans in Congress to end their all-out assault on the Affordable Care Act.

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Today U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson of the Eastern District of Virginia filed an opinion upholding the Affordable Care Act while declaring the “individual-responsibility” provision to be unconstitutional. Here is a statement from Ethan Rome, executive director of Health Care for America Now (HCAN), on the ruling:

“We are pleased that Judge Hudson rejected Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s attempt to strike down the Affordable Care Act and denied the request for an injunction. However, the judge declared that the “individual-responsibility” requirement is unconstitutional. We think that is wrong on the merits and bad for people’s health. If his decision is upheld, it would give the green light for insurance companies to deny people care based on pre-existing conditions. Putting insurance companies back in charge of our health care is the wrong way to go.

“Only when everyone has coverage can we end the industry’s discrimination against nearly 60 million people with pre-existing health conditions while also keeping health costs down.“We are confident that the ACA ultimately will be ruled constitutional, that implementation will continue to move forward at a swift pace and that the law will fulfill its promise of providing quality, affordable coverage and health security to all Americans.”

“Judge Hudson’s ruling is no more important than decisions by 14 other federal district judges of equal rank who have determined that the law is constitutional or have dismissed complaints on procedural grounds, and the ultimate decision will rest with the U.S. Supreme Court.

Download and read HCAN's memo to reporters and editors re: Federal Court Decisions on the Affordable Care Act ]]> http://blog.healthcareforamericanow.org/2010/12/13/hcan-statement-on-virginia-federal-court-ruling/feed/ http://blog.healthcareforamericanow.org/2010/12/10/friendly-reminder-foxs-unbalanced-ethics-threaten-democracy/ http://blog.healthcareforamericanow.org/2010/12/10/friendly-reminder-foxs-unbalanced-ethics-threaten-democracy/#comments Sat, 11 Dec 2010 03:42:13 +0000 Wendell Potter - Center for Media and Democracy http://blog.healthcareforamericanow.org/2010/12/10/friendly-reminder-foxs-unbalanced-ethics-threaten-democracy/ Anyone who still clings to the notion that Fox News is actually a news organization rather than a propaganda machine for special interests — and that it actually is led by journalists who adhere to the code of ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists — must read the leaked memos Media Matters disclosed this morning.

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Anyone who still clings to the notion that Fox News is actually a news organization rather than a propaganda machine for special interests — and that it actually is led by journalists who adhere to the code of ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists — must read the leaked memos Media Matters for America disclosed this morning.

Under the heading of "Fox boss caught slanting news reporting," Media Matters shared on its Web site an internal memo that Bill Sammon, Fox News' Washington managing editor, sent a memo "at the height of the health care reform debate" to his network's so-called journalists, directing them not to use the phrase "public option."

Instead, Sammon told them, they should use focus-tested Republican and insurance industry talking points "to turn public opinion against the Democrats' reform efforts."

In his October 27, 2009 memo to his staff, Sammon offered what he call a "friendly reminder: let's not slip back into calling it the 'public option.'" Instead, he ordered:

1)  Please use the term "government-run health insurance" or, when brevity is a concern, "government option," whenever possible.2) When it is necessary to use the term "public option" (which is, after all, firmly ensconced in the nation's lexicon), use the qualifier "so-called," as in "the so-called public option."

3) Here's another way to phrase it: "The public option, which is the government-run plan."

4) When newsmakers and sources use the term "public option" in our stories, there's not a lot we can do about it, since quotes are of course sacrosanct.

As I wrote in my book, Deadly Spin, PR firms representing the health insurance industry routinely furnished conservative pundits and so-called journalists with talking points their consultants developed to scare people away from reform.

The insurance industry has spent millions of our premium dollars over the years on linguistic research and message testing to assist it in disseminating false and misleading information to manipulate public opinion.

I devoted an entire chapter to the industry's "playbook." Here is one of the tactics I said included in the playbook:

Feed talking points to TV pundits and freaquent contributors to op-ed pages. They will know how to get talk show hosts with big audiences like Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly or Glenn Beck to say things on the air to support your point of view and discredit your opponents.

This morning grassroots advocacy coalition Health Care for America Now asked its supporters to "reject Fox News and its attempts to continually attack the Affordable Care Act and the people who support it under the guise of legitimate 'reporting.'"

I am calling on Rupert Murdoch to fire Sammon, and I am calling on Fox's so-called journalists and the network's producers, many of whom I know and have worked with over the years, to denounce Sammon's partisan approach to reporting and commentary. I am further calling on them — and the news staff at the Wall Street Journal, also owned by Murcoch, to dedicate themselves to truly being "fair and balanced" and to familiarize themselves with the profession's code of ethics.

Northing short of our democracy is at stake here, folks.

[Cross-posted on PRWatch.org and Huffington Post.]

On the one hand, I was a bit surpised by Edelman's rather absurd claim that I had "no right to say" that big PR firms have a reputation for deceiving people, and that I should not have called into question the (profit) motive of PR practitioners who are really just "interested in the truth and in educating stakeholders about the issues of our time." After 30 years in the PR industry, I most certainly do have a right to call out the deceptive campaigns PR firms have orchestrated to obscure the truth and deceive the American public in the debate over health care reform and beyond. I detail these campaigns at length in my book, Deadly Spin, which is based on my own participation in just these practices.

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Sammie Lynn had been a journalist before going into teaching and taught several journalism courses, including the first one I ever took, Basic News Writing. She also served for a while as a PR professional, and was determined to establish a comprehensive PR curriculum at UT. It hadn't been fully fleshed out by the time I graduated in 1973, but I took every PR course offered at the time, including all of the graduate level courses. 

The first PR textbook I ever used was Effective Public Relations by Scott Cutlip and Allen Center. First published in 1952, it is still considered the PR "bible" by many PR teachers and practitioners. In my view, one of the reasons it is called the PR bible is that Cutlip & Center, from the very beginning, preached the importance of ethics and ethical behavior. As I told the students at PR Day, I did not learn in PR school — not from Cutlip & Center, and certainly not from Sammie Lynn — how to set up fake grassroots organizations and front groups to disseminate false or misleading information in order to manipulate public opinion and influence public policy. I would not learn how to do that — and how prevalent such PR practices are — until many years later, when I was deep into by career as a corporate communications executive.

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(L-R) Alex Potter, Michael Moore and Wendell Potter

I need to apologize to Moore for the role I played in the insurance industry's public relations attack campaign again him and Sicko, which was about the increasingly unfair and dysfunctional U.S. health care system. (I was head of corporate communications at one of the country's biggest insurance companies when I left my job in May 2008.) And I need to apologize to health insurers for failing to note in my new book, Deadly Spin, that the front group they used to attack Moore and Sicko — Health Care America — was originally a front group for drug companies. APCO Worldwide, the PR firm that operated the front group for insurers during the summer of 2007, was outraged — outraged, I tell you — that I wrote in the book that the raison d'être for Health Care America was to disseminate the insurance industry's talking points as part of a multi-pronged, fear-mongering campaign against Moore and his movie. An APCO executive told a reporter who had reviewed the book that I was guilty of one of the deceptive PR tactics I condemned: the selective disclosure of information to manipulate public opinion. 

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“American families and businesses came out on top today. The new MLR rule is a tough, commonsense, fair regulation that for the first time requires health insurance companies to put patient care before excessive profits and CEO pay. The rule provides important new protections and choices to consumers and levels the playing field for insurers. The industry now has clear goals that responsible companies can achieve, and if insurance companies don’t comply they’ll have to pay rebates to their customers.

“This rule will change the way health insurance companies do business, and along with other provisions, the Affordable Care Act will end such unconscionable abuses as denying people coverage because they are sick. That's the kind of anti-consumer behavior the Republican Party is fighting to bring back by pushing for repeal of the newlaw, which would disrupt the market and hurt consumers. When the Republicanscall for repeal, they’re talking about throwing out rules like this one and putting consumers at the mercy of the insurance companies again. The Republican repeal-mongers are not only on the wrong side, they’re also just plain out-of-touch with the needs of businesses to move forward and the desires of consumers to have better care.”

During my interview on Countdown with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC Wednesday night, I explained the sinister work of an industry-funded front group to discredit Michael Moore as a filmmaker and citizen and especially of his 2007 movie, Sicko. The PR firm hired by health insurers to do the evil deed set up and operated the front group, which it named “Health Care America,” to conduct a fear-mongering campaign designed to scare people away from the movie’s core message: that every developed country in the world except the United States has been able to achieve universal coverage for their citizens largely because they don’t allow big insurance companies to call the shots like they do here. I wrote about this in my book, Deadly Spin, in the chapter entitled “The Campaign Against Sicko.”

I inadvertently called the front group “Health Care America Now” in response to a question from Keith Olbermann. That misstatement has led to some confusion, so I want to set the record straight. Health Care for America Now is one of the good guys, in my view. It is a real grassroots organization comprising a broad range of groups throughout the country advocating for “quality, affordable health care.” Health Care America was what is commonly known as a fake grassroots or “Astroturf” organization. It was set up and operated by a big PR firm and funded by Big Insurance and Big Pharma.

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What a difference a word can make — nothing short of the difference between good and evil.

During my interview on Countdown with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC Wednesday night, I explained the sinister work of an industry-funded front group to discredit Michael Moore as a filmmaker and citizen and especially of his 2007 movie Sicko. The PR firm hired by health insurers to do the evil deed set up and operated the front group, which it named “Health Care America,” to conduct a fear-mongering campaign designed to scare people away from the movie’s core message: that every developed country in the world except the United States has been able to achieve universal coverage for their citizens largely because they don’t allow big insurance companies to call the shots like they do here. I wrote about this in my book, Deadly Spin, in the chapter entitled “The Campaign Against Sicko.”

I inadvertently called the front group “Health Care America Now” in response to a question from Keith Olbermann. That misstatement has led to some confusion, so I want to set the record straight. Health Care for America Now is one of the good guys, in my view. It is a real grassroots organization comprising a broad range of groups throughout the country advocating for “quality, affordable health care.” Health Care America was what is commonly known as a fake grassroots or “Astroturf” organization. It was set up and operated by a big PR firm and funded by Big Insurance and Big Pharma.

For more information about Health Care for America Now (also known by its acronym, HCAN), visit its Web site at healthcareforamericanow.org. For more information about Health Care America, click this link, which will take you to the Sourcewatch.org page that describes the organization. The Web site for Health Care America no longer is active. It was dismantled shortly after its work to discredit Michael Moore and Sicko was done.

Insurance Companies Force Consumers to Pay Bigger Share of Health Bills;

Republicans Aim to Kill Consumer Protections by Repealing New Law

Washington, DC — The six largest investor-owned health insurance companies recorded huge profit gains in the third quarter of 2010 by spending a smaller share of premiums on medical care, purging unprofitable members and burdening consumers with higher cost-sharing limits. WellPoint Inc., UnitedHealth Group Inc., Aetna Inc., Humana Inc., Cigna Corp. and Coventry Health Care Inc. made combined profits of $3.4 billion in the three months ending Sept. 30, a 22% increase over the third quarter of 2009 (Table 1 – SEE PDF OF RELEASE), according to an analysis of company filings by Health Care for America Now (HCAN).

“The insurance companies are jacking up rates and selling lousy coverage without regard to the devastating impact on real people’s financial security and their health,” said HCAN Executive Director Ethan Rome. “Their behavior is offensive, and it’s outrageous that the Republicans in Congress want to give control of our health care back to the insurance companies by repealing the Affordable Care Act. We need the law and the protections it provides.”

One reason premiums and profits continue rising is that insurers keep reducing the percentage of premiums they spend on actual health care (Table 2 - SEE PDF OF RELEASE), a measurement known as the medical-loss ratio, or MLR, by denying people care. Coventry cut its MLR for employer and individual health plans by an unheard-of 5.3 percentage points to 76.8%. That increased Coventry’s third-quarter profit by 169% from a year earlier. Aetna’s MLR plunged 5.1 percentage points to 80.5%, and its third-quarter profit surged 53%. Other companies also reported double-digit profit growth and major reductions in MLRs, consistent with long–term industry trends. In 1993, the leading health insurers used about 95 cents of every premium dollar on actual health care. By 2007, after years of mergers and acquisitions that put much of the U.S. population under the control of a handful of for-profit companies, investor-owned health insurers had jacked up premiums and lowered the medical-loss ratio to around 81%.

“The financial engineers running the insurance companies know they make money by denying care, and they makemore money by denying more care,” said Rome. “That’s why the tough protections and increased competition and choice in the new law are so important. The law ends the total stranglehold that these companies have on our health care.”

New minimum MLRs are set to take effect next year under the new law. The landmark health care legislation requires insurance companies to spend up to 85% of premiums on medical services instead of profits and executive pay. Insurers also must publicly defend their premium hikes. The law will guarantee health security for all Americans and end the worst insurance company abuses, such as pre-existing condition exclusions.

“The health insurance companies continue to blame skyrocketing insurance premiums on rising medical costs when they know that’s simply not true,” said Rome. Rate hikes have for years greatly surpassed the growth of medical costs, wages and overall inflation. According to HCAN, they are the result of excessive profits, money-driven customer abuses and extravagant executive compensation.

As insurers set more earnings records, more financially stressed health plan members have chosen less expensive catastrophic coverage with high deductibles and co-payments. This flimsy coverage has caused a growing number of people with health insurance to avoid their doctors, leave prescriptions unfilled and skip diagnostic tests recommended by physicians.

With premiums out of control and the economy weak, the number of Americans without health coverage soared as high as 59 million last year. From Dec. 31, 2008, to Sept. 30, 2010, the combined commercial enrollment of the six companies fell by a staggering 3.4 million, according to the HCAN analysis (Table 3 - SEE PDF OF RELEASE). Many people who lose coverage remain uninsured or apply for federal–state Medicaid benefits.

“The health care law for the first time will put a check on the out-of-control behavior of the insurancecompanies,” Rome said. “Repealing this law is the most anti-consumer thing the Congress can do, and it’s the only health care idea the Republicans appear to have.”

VIEW TABLES IN PDF HERE

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ORLANDO–If you are hopeful that the consumer protections in the health care reform law actually wind up benefiting consumers more than the insurance industry, please send a thank-you note to executives at UnitedHealth Group, the largest U.S. health insurer, 

United announced Tuesday morning that it's third-quarter profit jumped 23% — much more than investors and analysts had expected — largely because it spent far less of its customers' premiums on medical care than it did this time last year. When an insurance company spends less of every premium dollar it takes in on medical care, it has more left over to reward shareholders and a handful of senior managers who already are among the highest-paid executives on the planet. 

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As I sit beside my 92-year-old father in his hos­pi­tal bed in Kingsport, Tennessee, there are reminders all around me of why I left my job in the http://blog.healthcareforamericanow.org/?p=5072

Several health insurance companies have announced that they are ending insurance coverage for children because the new law won’t let them turn away the sick ones anymore. That's right – WellPoint, CoventryOne and others are refusing to issue new child-only policies because the companies will no longer be able to deny coverage to children with “pre-existing conditions.” They blame their actions on the new health care law, not their own greed.  Even for the insurance industry this behavior is surprisingly brazen. They don’t like the rules, so they’re going to take their ball and go home.

The insurance companies announced their plans to turn away sick kids only days before Sept. 23, when important parts of the health insurance law take effect. These include consumer protections that end the worst of insurance company abuses. The law puts an end to odious practices like dropping people because they got sick, putting annual and lifetime limits on how much coverage you can get from the insurance policy you rightly thought covered everything, and denying children coverage because they're sick.

Once the law is fully implemented, insurance companies will not be able to deny any of us coverage because we have an illness, or drop us when we do, or force us into bankruptcy because of caps on how much of our health care they'll pay for (you can read a summary here). That's why this law really is a BFD, and that’s why this latest move by the insurance companies is so over the top.

In explaining its action, and blaming the new law (which apparently they just got around to reading), Anthem cited “uncertainty as to how the rules will be implemented and what the impacts might be on participating insurers.”  They also whined about “an unlevel competitive environment.” Seriously?

CoventryOne said its inability to discriminate against sick children "poses undue risks that could undermine our ability to offer value and meet our continued obligations to existing policyholders." It's not clear what those obligations are since it appears that as soon as Coventry has any obligations toward you they may drop you as a policyholder – or drop your entire line of coverage.

It’s noteworthy that the insurance companies are doing exactly what they said they would not do when Karen Ignagni, President and Chief Executive Officer of America’s Health Insurance Plans, wrote to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on March 29, 2010.  In that letter Ignagni said that “Health plans recognize the significant hardship that a family faces when they are unable to obtain coverage for a child with a pre-existing condition.” Amazingly, Ignagni went on to take credit for this provision of the law:  “That is why health plans in 2008 proposed reforms to make pre-existing condition exclusions a thing of the past.”  I hate to pile on, but the letter continued:  “With respect to the provisions related to coverage for children, we await and will fully comply with the regulations described in your letter.”  That is impressive. To say Ignagni was being casual with the truth is an understatement, but that’s what we’ve come to expect. Just months ago, WellPoint and Aetna were found to have submitted phony numbers to California insurance regulators to keep them from interfering with their rate hikes. This is why so many of us don’t trust the insurance industry—telling the truth just doesn’t come naturally to the insurance companies.

The insurance companies have a new cheerleader in Mike Huckabee, a former Republican presidential candidate and pre-existing condition himself. At the Values Voters Summit on Friday, where Huckabee spoke along with the latest newcomer to the whack-job express, Christine O'Donnell, Huckabee denounced providing health insurance to people with pre-existing conditions (Forbes’ Nick Ungar blasts Huckabee here). Here's what Huckabee actually said:

“It sounds so good, and it’s such a warm message to say we’re not gonna deny anyone from a pre-existing condition. Look, I think that sounds terrific, but I want to ask you something from a common sense perspective. Suppose we applied that principle [to] our property insurance. And you can call your insurance agent and say, ‘I’d like to buy some insurance for my house.’ He’d say, ‘Tell me about your house.’ ‘Well sir, it burned down yesterday, but I’d like to insure it today.’ And he’ll say ‘I’m sorry, but we can’t insure it after it’s already burned.’ Well, no pre-existing conditions.”

I had almost forgotten about Mike Huckabee.  Along with O'Donnell, Huckabee now joins the pantheon of other serious Republican whack jobs like Sharron Angle, Glenn Beck, and Sarah Palin.  It's a high bar and he cleared it easily.

The insurance industry hardly needs more cheerleaders.  They already have the Republican leaders in Congress who want to give our health care back to the insurance companies so they can deny our care, jack up our rates and run roughshod over America's families and businesses. Their partisan rhetoric for repeal is as callous as it is unworkable.

The latest announcement by the insurance companies that they won't cover kids is immoral, and to blame their appalling behavior on the new law is patently dishonest.  Instead, they should reverse their actions immediately and follow the spirit of the law, instead of exploiting loopholes.

This offensive behavior by the insurance companies is yet another reminder of why the new law is so important and why the Republican call for repeal is so misguided.  For too many years, it's been the insurance companies against us, and they win. With the new consumer protections, we can start winning for a change – and get the health care we pay for and need.

If the insurance companies are so willing to turn their backs on sick children now, who will they abandon next?

As we all know, the insurance industry mounted a massive campaign to defeat health care reform and maintain their stranglehold on our health care. But after they lost, they turned their attention to undermining the new law so they can continue their obscene profiteering, their unconscionable denials of care and their shameless practice of giving CEOs jaw-dropping pay packages.

The top five companies reported a record $12.2 billion in net earnings last year. That’s huge. And the top executives at 10 for-profit companies have pocketed nearly $1 billion in compensation in the last 10 years. That’s staggeringly huge. As a group they received a 167 percent pay raise in 2009 while average American workers saw wages grow about 2 percent. That’s offensively indefensible.

Led by the Washington-based trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans, the $892 billion-a-year health insurance industry laundered $20 million through the U.S. Chamber of Commerce this year to blanket the airwaves with anti-reform TV ads. The Chamber has since announced a $75 million campaign against pro-reform members of Congress running for re-election in November. Insurance companies also are considering spending another $20 million to create their own front group to attack reform supporters and elect pro-industry lawmakers.

The insurance companies are now coordinating a lobbying assault on regulators. Activists are fighting back and we can all help.

This weekend, more than 1,000 insurance lobbyists and executives are expected to converge in Seattle to pressure the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) to undercut important new rules intended to control costs and make health insurance more affordable for families and businesses. The new health reform law includes a provision (medical-loss ratio) that requires insurance companies to spend on patient care at least 80 percent of health plan premiums collected from individuals and small employers and 85 percent of premiums paid by large employers. The insurance companies are trying to protect their profits and divert premium dollars away from patient care by having non-medical costs, such as lobbying, profits, executive pay and administration, defined as “medical” under this new regulation.

The insurance lobbyists will be met by scores of activists, because the stakes in this fight are high. Simply put, the battle over the medical-loss ratio is the new health care reform fight, and if the health insurance companies win, we lose. If they win, they’ll be able to deny people needed care and call the administrative costs of that denial “medical care” under the new law.

In a powerful letter to the NAIC president in July, Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, urged the insurance commissioners not to succumb to the pressure applied by the industry.

“It is clear that health insurance companies are sparing no expense to weaken this new law and the protection it promises to America’s consumers,” Rockefeller said. “Health insurance companies and their allies have been furiously lobbying the NAIC to write the medical-loss ratio definitions in a way that will allow them to continue doing business as they did before the passage of health reform. The resources health insurance companies are throwing into their effort to weaken the medical-loss ratio appear almost limitless.”

Unlike federal lobbying disclosure rules, health insurance companies aren’t required to reveal what they are spending to influence state insurance commissioners, but the numbers are high. In New York alone, the health insurance industry has spent $10,602,387 on lobbying since 2007, according to an HCAN review of data maintained by the New York State Commission on Public Integrity. No figures are readily available on how much money health insurers spend on lobbying in 49 other state capitals.

This gap in reporting is troubling because this lobbying assault on the NAIC is new. This category of state officials—insurance commissioners—has never been subjected to a nationally coordinated pressure campaign to use their state authority to block implementation of consumer protections enacted by Congress. The NAIC is due to make its recommendations soon—perhaps even this weekend—to the U.S. Health and Human Services Department.

That’s why these massive lobbying expenditures must be disclosed. The public has a right to know how much the insurance companies are spending to protect their excessive profits and outrageous CEO pay by changing the intent of the medical-loss ratio established by Congress.

The health insurance industry wants to expand the definition of allowable medical expenses to include costs that are not directly related to the delivery of care and have not historically been classified as medical. Instead of reducing costs and improving the efficiency of their operations, they simply want to change how certain expenses are classified so they don’t really have to alter business practices. Already, WellPoint, the nation’s largest private health insurance company by enrollment and operator of Blue Cross plans in 14 states, has reclassified $500 million in administrative costs as medical expenses. The amount of money riding on the outcome of this battle is huge. If the new law had been on the books in 2009, the six largest for-profit health insurance companies would have been required to refund $1.9 billion for that year alone.

The medical-loss ratio standards in the Affordable Care Act are critical to curbing the worst of the health insurance industry’s consumer abuses, controlling rising premium costs, increasing the value of premiums paid by private and public customers, and reining in the profiteering of health insurance companies. If the lobbyists are thwarted and rules governing medical-loss ratios, rate review and other consumer protections are implemented as intended, the health reform law will hold accountable an industry that abuses millions of customers when they need health benefits the most.

We can all join the fight to hold the insurance industry accountable by demanding that they disclose how much they spend to lobby the NAIC and other state officials. Their unbridled efforts to protect the status quo must be stopped.

The Missouri vote was nothing more than a Republican straw poll. It lacks any legal force, and it certainly wasn’t about health care. If supporters of reform thought this referendum was about the new law, we would have run a campaign against it. But it wasn’t, so we didn’t.

This referendum was really about local Missouri politics in an election dominated by Republican primaries for state auditor, U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives in the 7th and 8th districts, and many state legislative races. The truth is that this was a confusing, partisan ballot measure that included two unrelated questions—one that had nothing to do with the new law and the other that focused on only a single provision of it.

The Missouri referendum wasn’t a vote about ending unfair insurance company practices or making health care affordable. It wasn’t about stopping insurance companies from dumping you when you’re sick or ending the outrageous denial of coverage to children just because they have an illness requiring care. It wasn’t a vote on free preventive care for everyone or saving money for struggling seniors who rely on expensive prescription drugs. And it certainly wasn’t a vote on keeping millions of American families from being driven into bankruptcy by massive medical bills.

The Missouri referendum was a cynical partisan ploy to undermine the law before it even takes effect, just like the frivolous lawsuit filed by the state attorney general in Virginia. The Missouri vote was political theater for Republicans and an attempt to undermine a law that cuts health care costs for families and businesses and ends the worst of insurance company abuses.

People are just as tired of Republicans playing politics as they are of insurance companies denying care while making record profits.

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I'm talking about the fight over the so-called "medical-loss ratio." The insurance companies are pressuring state insurance regulators to undermine a key provision of the law to protect their excessive profits. They want to gut the federal requirement that insurers spend at least 80 percent of premiums on medical care in the individual and small-group markets and 85 percent in the large-group market, or rebate the difference to consumers. The industry is determined to undercut the new law and hold onto its ability to rip off families and employers. They want to continue their long-time practice of spending low percentages of premium revenue on actual medical care in certain states and for certain customers.

If the new law had been on the books in 2009, the six largest for-profit health insurance companies would have been required to refund $1.9 billion for that year alone, according to a Wall Street analyst. Despite the industry's whining, this rebate would have represented only a fraction of their massive profits. The top five for-profit health insurers alone recorded $12.2 billion in profits in 2009.

The definition of "medical care" is at the core of this fight. The law sets a minimum for how much of each premium dollar insurance companies must spend on actual health care. So they want to change the definition of "medical care" to include things that aren't medical care and that have never been considered as such. And the insurance companies are shameless in just how far they will go. They really are trying to have "underwriting," the process by which sick people are weeded out of eligibility for coverage, defined as a medical expense! Along with claims processing, call centers and other expenses that aren't about the actual delivery of care.

This is why we must implement and enforce the new law as it was intended - to hold the insurance industry accountable, stop the worst of their abuses and rein in skyrocketing costs.

Naturally, the insurance companies are doing everything they can to undercut the law by attempting to change the very definition of "medical care" so they can feed their insatiable greed. As Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia said in a hard-hitting, fact-filled letter to the President of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), the insurance industry is "sparing no expense to weaken this new law and the protection it promises to America's consumers." The Senator described the insurance industry's effort to influence the NAIC, the organization charged with making detailed recommendations to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on the definitions of medical-loss ratios and other key regulations.

Today HCAN released a comprehensive report on this issue with Senator Al Franken of Minnesota and Representative Bill Pascrell Jr. of New Jersey, along with members of the Main Street Alliance, a network of state-based small businesses. The report shines a light on the accounting tricks the insurance companies want to play to game the medical-loss ratio system, and it exposes their lobbying offensive to protect the status quo and undermine this part of the law before it even takes effect.

Thankfully, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and the Obama Administration are aggressively implementing the insurance accountability provisions in the new law.

It all comes down to this: Insurers want to use this regulatory fight to take back control of our health care, and we can't let them succeed. We think things like going to the doctor should be considered medical care, and marketing and denying care should not. We don't think that insurance companies should count the cost of stacking and counting their profits as part of your "medical care." That's why a seemingly arcane debate over the definition of the medical-loss ratio is so important.

We all need to fight back. You can go to the HCAN website and take action today.

The timing of his call for a moratorium on new federal regulations is impeccable.

He waited until the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico reached such catastrophic proportions that even people who hate regulations now crave them. He waited until the day after the Senate passed the hugely popular sweeping reform to regulate the fat cats on Wall Street. In fact, he even waited until regulations got popular with the public. He even waited until health care started becoming popular again - with a clear majority against repeal.

It may be that the Minority Leader is tired of being one-upped by Mitch McConnell and is jealous he doesn't have a filibuster of his own. The Republicans in the Senate have elevated saying "no" to an art form.

The Republicans in the Senate said no to unemployment benefits, no to aid to the states, no to creating jobs, no to standing up to Wall Street. They have been talking a lot recently about extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich - no matter how much that increases the deficit - but they won't extend unemployment benefits because that will increase the deficit.

Today Boehner said "having a moratorium is a good idea" because it will give the "private sector some breathing room." Sure. Just like unemployment gives people free time. And oil spills give enviros something to do.

Joking aside, a moratorium on regulations is not going to create jobs and jump-start the economy and that's what we need. A real recovery package will. All the Republicans want to do is return to the policies of George W. Bush and let the greedy corporations run the show.

Boehner's big idea today is so silly it's almost comical. So let's chuckle for a moment and stay focused on November.

Now they're going after Donald Berwick, the Harvard Medical School professor who President Obama appointed to run the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Service (CMS). Sure, Berwick may have traveled to London once (or even twice), but for eight years we had a President who had barely set foot outside of the U.S. before he was elected and then he dragged us into two endless wars that continue to suck the life out of our economy and exponentially increase our deficit.

Which leads me to Dr. Berwick. He's eminently qualified. Everyone who's not trying to score partisan, political points says so. Mark McClellan, who had the job under the last President Bush, said:

"What happens at CMS in the next few years will determine whether the new legislation actually improves quality and lowers costs. Don [Berwick] has a unique background in both improving care on the ground and thinking about how our nation's health care policies need to be reformed to help make that happen."

But none of this matters to the Republican leadership in Congress. Berwick's merits are irrelevant to them. They just blather on and on without regard for the truth. And the truth is that we need this recess appointment because we need to fill this position and move this health reform implementation along.

Consider a few facts:

• CMS has been with out a permanent head since 2006.
• George W. Bush made 171 recess appointments.
• President Obama has now made a total of 18 recess appointments.
• There are currently 180 nominees still pending before the Senate.

One might assume that Senate Republican Leaders might care about these issues. But they don't. They no longer seem to care about anything but crass partisan politics. And they're happy to hold up the process no matter what the consequences. They don't care if people lose their health care benefits. Or if their unemployment benefits run out. Or if state governments have to cut services and lay people off. People don't matter to them. And neither does the truth.

Which is why Sarah Palin really is a whack job. Her "tweet" this Tuesday on the topic says it all:

@sarahpalinusa: Press Corps-pls do your job as Obama sneaks in Berwick appt;pls cover his mission:socialized healthcare&rationing based on"quality of life.

And the Republican leaders in the Senate are no longer holding themselves to a higher standard than people like Palin who are free to "go rogue". They feel no obligation to govern and use the Senate for good of the American people. They have become nothing but populist demagogues, political parasites of the worst kind (though I don't mean to leave out Representatives Boehner or Canter, but fortunately their grotesque political games can't hijack the entire Congressional agenda the way their Senate counterparts can).

So kudos to the White House for doing the right thing and addressing the needs of our country, our economy and the more than 100 million Americans who depend on the life-saving and life-enhancing care provided by Medicaid and Medicare.

Obama is right — but only to a point. An important right was missing from his list of consumer protections because, once again, insurers had made sure it would not be part of any bill that reached his desk.

The insurance industry defeated many attempts to pass a Patients’ Bill of Rights in the 1990s and 2000s, despite considerable bipartisan support in both the House and Senate. It did this by funneling millions of dollars through a big PR firm it hired to set up a front group — the Health Benefits Coalition — whose sole purpose was to scare people away from the legislation. The industry also had one especially important ally: Obama’s predecessor in the White House, George W. Bush. Bush threatened to veto any Patients’ Bill of Rights that he (read: the insurance industry and its business allies) didn’t like. Lawmakers were never able to agree on a single bill that Senators and House members could agree to (the House approved a weakened version of the bill Bush presumably would sign but the Senate refused to weaken its bill), so they eventually just gave up.

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Shareholders never got to ask why WellPoint and its Blue Cross plans in 14 states look like a train wreck to 34 million uneasy customers. Before Bush collapsed, the AFL-CIO, Connecticut's public employee retirement system and other shareholders criticized WellPoint for abusing consumers, funding a duplicitous campaign to block health reform, and misusing premium money to give indefensible compensation packages to top executives. In 2009, Braly's pay jumped 51 percent to $13.1 million. Many of us didn't get a raise at all last year. Ten percent didn't even have jobs.

Shareholders at the meeting didn't get answers to some other big questions on the minds of investors. Why did legendary stock picker Warren Buffett, the world's third richest man, dump 1.3 million shares (worth about $70 million at today's price) of WellPoint stock during the first quarter. Buffett knows a little bit about money. What's the deal? And what's up with the company's outrageous submission of inaccurate data to get California regulators to permit premium increases as large as 39 percent for individuals this year? And why is the company driven to pursue sleazy policies, like targeting patients with breast cancer for fraud investigations, and then calling President Obama a liar for saying the practice should stop? Is that really in the interest of the owners of $23 billion worth of WellPoint stock? Most investors want WellPoint to make money, not enemies.

Maybe Braly wasn't worried about how things would look because her P.R. team decided shortly before the shareholders meeting to drop plans to webcast the event. Only reporters who attended in person could observe. Just like the health insurer Cigna did at its annual shareholder meeting last month, WellPoint shut out the media to minimize the impact of embarrassing questions.

Greed has made WellPoint completely lose touch with the founding mission of the nonprofit Blue Cross companies it acquired over the last 15 years (in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, Nevada, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin). The Blue Cross plans, once seen as a refuge for each state's sickest residents, have been transformed by Braly and her ilk into cash machines to satisfy the unbridled greed of Wall Street and corporate executives.

Rather than accept responsibility for the insurance industry's unwillingness to slow the growth of health costs through tougher negotiations with doctors, hospitals and drug makers, Braly and her industry peers prefer to just keep raising prices, cutting benefits, denying care and boosting their profits and compensation. They serve the needs of the high rollers on Wall Street instead of millions of Americans.

The good news is that more shareholders are refusing to accept WellPoint's unconscionable behavior and are taking action. The evidence of that came at the meeting when shareholders adopted a resolution to limit excessive CEO compensation by giving themselves an advisory vote on executive pay during the company's annual meetings. Among the shareholders who demanded more "say on pay" was Connecticut State Treasurer Denise L. Nappier, who controls investments for the $23 billion pension plan for state employees. Similar proposals were defeated by WellPoint shareholders in 2008 and 2009, but the tide has turned.

The grotesque compensation paid to insurance CEOs costs more than the face value of their pay packages. It also exerts unhealthy influences on CEOs' decisions about company finances and health care policy even when customers' lives are at stake. That's why shining a light on companies like WellPoint is so important.

Even by the standards of people who believe that it's okay to do just about anything to make money, WellPoint consistently goes too far. Their turbo-charged greed is out of control, and their lack of any moral compass is shocking.

It seems that WellPoint CEO Angela Braly hasn't been happy with British Petroleum (BP) grabbing all the headlines lately as the most reckless, buck-passing, greedy corporation. So she unwisely decided to pick a fight with President Obama, who rightly used his Saturday address to the nation to criticize the insurance industry — and her company in particular. President Obama attacked the insurance industry's "perverse practice of dropping people's coverage when they get sick" and described Americans as "held hostage to an insurance industry that jacks up premiums and drops coverage as they please".

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has also been fighting with Braly and WellPoint and for good reason: like the other big for-profit insurers, they've been making money hand over fist — at our expense. Their turbo-charged greed is out of control, and their lack of any moral compass is shocking.

Yesterday Heath Care for America Now released a report on insurance industry profits and the facts are stunning: In the worst economy since the Great Depression, the five largest for-profit health insurance companies recorded huge profit gains in the first three months of 2010 compared with a year earlier. WellPoint Inc., UnitedHealth Group Inc., Aetna Inc., Humana Inc. and Cigna Corp. reported combined net income of $3.2 billion, a 31 percent leap from the same period in 2009. Together they had already set a full-year profit record in 2009.

So how do they do it? They put profits for Wall Street and bloated CEO salaries above all else. It's called greed and they're good at it.

HCAN's report shows that the top five insurers made record profits by covering fewer people, offering worse benefits, providing less care and charging consumers and employers more in the process. It is an obscene business model: they sell people a product, make it worse but more expensive over time, and then deny people the service they've paid for when they need it.

So while their profits went up, their combined commercial enrollment fell by a staggering 2.8 million people since 2008. And they spent less on health care and more on profits and excessive CEO pay.

In 1993, the leading health insurers spent about 95 cents of every premium dollar on health care. Today, insurers have cut spending on actual medical care to around 81 percent. For the five largest health insurers, the difference between 81 and 95 percent of premiums in 2009 equaled about $25 billion.

This adds up to skyrocketing premiums that America's families and businesses can't afford.
But back to Braly and WellPoint Inc.

In February, WellPoint subsidiary Anthem Blue Cross announced plans to jack up rates by as much as 39% in California. On February 24, Braly testified before the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations to defend the proposed increases, saying they were justified by rising medical costs.

To say Braly was casual with the truth is generous. In fact, from 2000 to 2008, family premiums for the big insurers grew twice as fast as medical inflation, five times faster than general inflation and three times faster than wages.

And then, as we have all recently learned, it got worse; an independent auditor hired by the state showed that WellPoint's rate request was based on faulty numbers and should be drastically lower. Maybe WellPoint had bad intentions, or maybe they're just bad at math. Either way, the rate hike request was outrageous, unjustified and bad for consumers.

During this same period, the Reuters news service reported that WellPoint was engaged in one of the most unconscionable and reprehensible business practices imaginable. WellPoint was systematically targeting women with breast cancer to find ways to cancel their insurance when they needed it the most.

Not many people knew what an "algorithm" was before the Reuters investigation. I sure didn't. In this case, it's WellPoint's grotesque mathematical equation used by a computer to find ways to drop customers (such as women diagnosed with breast cancer) after they get sick. As a result, women are left to fight both cancer and WellPoint. This is appalling corporate behavior. Even by the standards of people who believe it's okay to do just about anything to make money, WellPoint went too far.

Because of the cooked California numbers, on April 28 HCAN urged all states that allow WellPoint to sell policies to study whether other rate hikes were based on faulty numbers. In a letter to governors and insurance commissioners, Health and Human Services Secretary Sebelius wrote that states lacking the authority to reject rate hikes should pass laws enabling them to do so. The Health Insurance Rate Authority Act of 2010, sponsored by Senator Dianne Feinstein and Representative Jan Schakowsky, is the logical next step.

The new health care reform law will guarantee health security for all Americans, end the worst insurance company abuses, and hold insurance companies accountable in a number of unprecedented ways. The Health Insurance Rate Authority Act of 2010 will build on the protections in the new law. It will give federal and state governments authority to review and reject unjustified rate increases. And it will stop Big Insurance from exploiting differences in state laws and taking advantage of the people who live in the 26 states lacking authority to reject or modify requested premium hikes.

Yesterday Health Care for America Now sent an e-mail asking our activists to call their Member of Congress and urge support for the Health Insurance Rate Authority Act of 2010 to make health care more affordable for businesses and families. In addition to calling Congress, feel free to call Angela Braly and let her know you're disgusted by her company's behavior and her misguided defense of it. Her number at WellPoint's headquarters is (317) 287-6000. ]]> http://blog.healthcareforamericanow.org/2010/05/14/rate-regulation-needed-to-restrain-big-insurance-greed/feed/ http://blog.healthcareforamericanow.org/2010/05/05/hcan-partners-rally-to-thank-congress-for-health-care-reform/ http://blog.healthcareforamericanow.org/2010/05/05/hcan-partners-rally-to-thank-congress-for-health-care-reform/#comments Wed, 05 May 2010 19:45:53 +0000 Melinda Gibson http://blog.healthcareforamericanow.org/?p=5036 Tomorrow, May 6, 2010, HCAN Partners - AFL-CIO, SEIU and United Steelworkers are rallying on Capitol Hill to thank Members of Congress for supporting health care reform. Congress took on the Insurance Companies.  They took on the Chamber of Commerce.  They took on the K Street Lobbyists and stood up for America's working families.

Rally Information (see flier below):

Date: Thursday, March 6th
Time: 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
Location: Longworth Fountain Plaza on Capital Hill, Washington, DC

Today, Health Care for America Now launched a feature on the homepage of its website dedicated to answering that question. It lays out the benefits of health reform for people depending on their insurance status - and when those benefits go into effect.

In keeping with our tradition, we will also highlight ways you can get involved with the continuing health reform fight. Because it will continue. Even though health reform is law the reform fight is far from over. The battle must continue on numerous fronts.

First, reform is being attacked by the radical right-wing, who are calling for its repeal.

While the effort to challenge health reform in court is unlikely to be successful, repeal efforts present an opportunity. Anyone who advocates repeal should be asked how far they're willing to go. Are they willing to say insurance companies should be allowed to deny care based on pre-existing conditions? For children? Or small businesses should give back their tax cuts for employee health care?

When asked, reform opponents like, for example, Missouri Senate candidate Roy Blunt tend to tell us exactly which side they're on - siding with the insurance companies and saying denials of care are completely acceptable. Opponents like this need to be called out and exposed.

Second, reform could be gutted from the inside by insurance companies and their lobbyists.

Health reform leaves a large amount of the crucial details up to national and state regulators. Whether regulators can effectively control premium increases, enforce Medical Loss Ratio provisions, and police pre-existing condition regulations will depend on how regulatory rules get written and enforced. Already, HHS is taking public comment on rules relating to premium oversight and MLR. You can bet insurance company lobbyists will be submitting as many comments as they can to make the rules HHS and the states write as favorable to profits as they can. It's crucial the people stand up and make their voice heard in this process.

And lastly, real efforts must be made to improve the law in Congress.

Giving the government stronger authority over rate increases, as proposed by Senator Feinstein and endorsed by President Obama, is still a good idea. A national public health insurance option is still a good idea. There are still champions in Congress willing to push issues like this. There are people running for Congress who are pushing for more and who deserve support. And the American people are still with us. We should keep fighting for more.

Health Care for America Now was formed in July of 2008 with the express purpose of turning health reform into law. Now that this has happened, Health Care for America Now is sticking around to expose the right wing for the insurance industry cronies they are, make sure the law is implemented in a way that lives up to the promise of reform, and help make further legislation a reality. The organization will be led by Ethan Rome, up to now our Deputy National Campaign Director, with our National Campaign Director, Richard Kirsch, transitioning into a role of Senior Adviser.

I joined the campaign in July of 2008 vowing to see it through until health reform either passed or died. Come tomorrow, I will be leaving Health Care for America Now. However, I plan to continue writing on the health reform fight as it moves forward. You can find my future work at my blog, The Seminal.

Health Care for America Now will continue to rally the grassroots, pressure Congress, and above all, make it clear that if the insurance companies win, we lose. And I'm confident it will be as successful in future endeavors as it was in its mission to make history and pass health reform.

List rates or pay, state tells insurers - Boston Globe

State regulators yesterday demanded that health insurers submit revised April 1 premium rates for tens of thousands of individuals and small businesses by 3 p.m. tomorrow or face stiff fines.

Cigna CEO: Move Beyond Obamacare - Forbes

David Cordani, who became Cigna's chief executive in January, says quite enough time and effort was been spent on the recently signed health legislation, even if he doesn't like the results. "It took a year of the country's energy. It's now time to move on," he said in an interview.

New Health Law Expands High-Risk Coverage - NPR

When Miles Owyang was born, six weeks premature, the doctors determined that he had a heart ailment. It was nothing serious, just something to monitor.

New Long-Term Care Insurance Will Provide Flexible Cash Benefits - Kaiser Health News

Millie Toda of Toledo, Ohio, takes cares of her husband Richard, 83, who is severely disabled from Parkinson’s Disease. She’s grateful that with the help of government-paid home health aides and adult day care, he’s able to continue living at home rather than move to a nursing home.

Health care reform: Attorney General Dustin McDaniel says office cannot issue an opinion on law - KTHV

Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel says his office cannot issue an opinion on whether the federal health care reform law is constitutional.

Sebelius: Gov't will work to close minority health gap - USA Today

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius  said Wednesday that she is developing a national plan of action that would focus for the first time on reducing health care disparities between minority and white populations.

AP-GfK Poll: Jump in opposition to health care law - AP

Opposition to President Barack Obama's health care law jumped after he signed it — a clear indication his victory could become a liability for Democrats in this fall's elections.

Waxman Backs Away From Challenge To Big Corporations On Health Costs - Kaiser Health News

A new congressional staff report has defused a standoff between Democrats and large corporations over losses the firms anticipate because of the new health overhaul law.

Obama picking up fundraising steam - LA Times

Now that his healthcare overhaul is complete, President Obama is raising campaign money at a ferocious pace, tapping into an energized corps of Democratic donors in quiet, less publicized forays to dinners and receptions embedded in official presidential trips.

OPINION

POLL: 59% Of Those In Favor Of Repeal Want Congress To Pursue The Public Option - Think Progress

Republicans have characterized the Democrats’ push to pass health care reform and their subsequent dismissal of GOP efforts to repeal the legislation as “arrogant,” pointing to opinion polls which show that Americans overwhelmingly oppose the new health care law and support its repeal. But if Republicans want to govern based on public opinion, they should be careful what they ask for.

Insurance concerns may delay heart attack patients from seeking treatment - LA Times

A study links the insurance status of people suffering heart attack symptoms to the time they take to get to the hospital. Both the uninsured and underinsured tend to delay going.

Democrat front-runner wins Fla. US House race - AP

A Democratic state senator on Tuesday handily won the first U.S. House race since Congress passed a massive health care overhaul, beating a decidedly underdog Republican who tried to use the backlash against the measure to pull an upset.

Health care reform critic running for governor in Florida - CNN

A wealthy former hospital executive who became one of the most visible opponents of President Obama's health care reform effort is launching an upstart bid for governor in Florida.

Georgia Insurance Commissioner Balks at Request on New Health Law - New York Times

The insurance commissioner of Georgia has chosen not to comply with a federal request to create a state pool for high-risk insurance plans, opening a new front in the resistance by state Republican officials to the new federal health care law.

Thousands of Anthem Blue Cross customers await decision on rate hikes - LA Times

The insurer had delayed the increases till May 1 pending a review by an outside actuary appointed by the state insurance commissioner. That report is expected within two weeks.

Mass. judge rules against insurers on premium cap - AP

A judge ruled Monday against Massachusetts health insurers in a dispute over premiums with state regulators.

Could Health Overhaul Incentives Hurt Some? - New York Times

The new health care law promises to extend coverage to millions of Americans and to cut costs by cultivating healthy habits and preventive care. But could its emphasis on wellness undermine one of its central achievements: putting an end to the practice of charging sick people more for health insurance?

Healthcare overhaul won't stop premium increases - LA Times

The new law doesn't prevent rate hikes such as Anthem Blue Cross' double-digit increase last year. 'It is a very big loophole,' says Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who is pushing regulatory legislation.

Healthcare reform 'baton' passes to states - Washington Post

Now that the U.S. healthcare reform plan is law, the federal government is turning to states to institute key components — some of which have never existed before — and do so in a tight timeframe.

John Boehner: Repeal number one priority - Politico

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Monday that repealing the health care law is his “No. 1 priority” as Congress returns from a two-week spring recess.

OPINION

Blunt rejects barring insurers from denying insurance to adults with pre-existing conditions. - Think Progress

Last week, Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO), who is running for the Senate, visited with health care professionals in Springfield, MO to hear their take on health care reform. On Friday, KSPR, an ABC affiliate in Missouri, aired footage from the meeting, capturing Blunt saying that unlike children, adults shouldn’t be protected from being discriminated against for insurance because of pre-existing conditions.

The Affordable Care Act does not have 10 years of taxes for six years of spending - Ezra Klein

One of the odder arguments that Republicans made against the Affordable Care Act was what David Brooks termed "the 10-6 dodge." As he put it, "one of the reasons the bill appears deficit-neutral in the first decade is that it begins collecting revenue right away but doesn't have to pay for most benefits until 2014. That's 10 years of revenues to pay for 6 years of benefits."

Thousands of Anthem Blue Cross customers await decision on rate hikes - LA Times

The insurer had delayed the increases till May 1 pending a review by an outside actuary appointed by the state insurance commissioner. That report is expected within two weeks.

PROMISES, PROMISES: Health plan maps Obama pledges - AP

The nation may be divided over the wisdom of President Barack Obama's big new health care law, but it largely delivers on more than 30 specific promises he made as a candidate.

Boccieri gives reasons for health care 'yes' vote on health care - The Daily Record

When U.S. Rep. John Boccieri cast his vote in support for the Senate version of health care reform, he did so because it was dramatically different from the House bill and "some things you vote on are just the right thing to do."

Scott lauded for helping pass health care reform - DailyPress.com

U.S. Rep. Robert C. "Bobby" Scott, D-Newport News, took a political victory lap Sunday with local Democrats  applauding him for the passage of health care reform.

Back home, defending their healthcare votes - LA Times

For three lawmakers — one who opposed the bill, one who supported it and one who changed his mind — it's time to explain themselves to uneasy constituents.

Orszag: CBO lowballs savings from Obama's healthcare reform - The Hill

White House Budget Director Peter Orszag is arguing that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) underestimates the savings from President Barack Obama's healthcare bill.

OPINION

Health-care reform's biggest losers - Ezra Klein

Rep. Bart Stupak has not had an easy year. He made himself a villain to liberals when he threatened to kill the Affordable Care Act unless the already-restrictive abortion language was made more restrictive. He made himself a villain to conservatives when he accepted an executive order saying that the abortion language in the bill was intended to be extremely restrictive. And now, after weeks of negative ads and angry letters and shouting phone calls, he's retiring.

Medicare Advantage Competitive Pricing: The Political Failure of a Good Idea - Kaiser Health News

Few Americans should be satisfied with the way the government pays private health insurance plans that participate in the Medicare Advantage program. Taxpayers pay 14 percent more to insure a beneficiary through the Advantage program than through traditional, fee-for-service Medicare, the program’s “public option.” The new health reform law–the Affordable Care Act–will reduce, but not eliminate, the additional payments to Advantage plans. Medicare beneficiaries are concerned  about the reductions in Advantage plan availability and generosity that will result from those payment cuts.

Bob’s Blog: The Health Reform You Haven't Heard About - The California Endowment

There’s a lot that’s gotten lost along the way in the coverage of the historic passage of the health care reform bill. The divisive partisan fight – and the media obsession with that fight – has diverted attention from what’s truly historic about this reform.

Judge to weigh in Monday on insurers suit vs. state - Boston Herald

Suffolk Superior Court Judge Stephen Neel plans to decide by Monday in a high-stakes showdown that pits the Patrick administration against the state’s six largest health insurers.

Health Care's Ugly Aftermath: The Death Threats Mount - Time

When someone threatens life of the President of the United States, the Secret Service reaction is usually swift and severe — casually joke about taking a potshot at the President in front of them and you'll wind up in jail quicker than you can say go. When members of Congress are threatened, by contrast, the response typically is not nearly as intense. Threats can languish on a clogged voicemail inbox of any number of staffers disbursed across many offices in different parts of the country. Capitol police must work backwards to reconstruct caller ID records, usually in coordination with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and local authorities. And the offenders often turn out to be simply irritated voters, angry over this bill or that congressional resolution; a rap on the knuckles has often been considered sufficient punishment.

APNewsBreak: Doyle could create public option - AP

Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle could use his veto power to create a state-funded public option health insurance plan in Wisconsin that would extend coverage to virtually everyone, according to a memo by the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau.

Suspect called Nancy Pelosi dozens of times - Politico

The California man charged with threatening House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called her office and home phone numbers at least 48 times, according to court documents released Thursday afternoon.

OPINION

Health-care reform adds safety net for young adults - Richmond Times-Dispatch

Beyond the storm of controversy over health-care reform, here's a talking point: Parents with young adult children should sleep a bit easier at night.

Medicaid: A Bargain, Not a Burden - The New Republic

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is not the only Republican Governor trying to rewrite history, distancing himself from the new federal health reform law that mirrors the proposal he once championed for his own state. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is doing it, too.

Out in Florida, people met Alan Grayson at the airport to thank him:

In Montana, they marked passage of reform with a vigil for those who lost their lives because they didn't have health care:

In New York, the people turned out at City Hall:

In North Dakota, they thanked Congressman Dorgan, Conrad, and Pomeroy:

In California, they thanked Reps. Speier, Napolitano, Berman, Pelosi, Miller and other members of the California delegation:

In Ohio, they thanked Representative Marcy Kaptur:

In Pennsylvania, they thanked Congresswoman Dahlkemper:

They also gathered outside the PA Attorney General's office to protest his decision to sue the federal government over health reform:

In Rhode Island, people met with Representative Langevin:

And in Washington, they thanked Senators Murray and Cantwell, Rep. Jay Inslee, and Rep. Brian Baird:

2 insurers to resume sales with old rates - Boston Globe

Seeking to tone down their dispute with state regulators, two Massachusetts health insurers yesterday said they will, as ordered, resume making new policies available for individuals and small businesses — using last year’s base rates, not the requested double-digit increases rejected by the state last week.

Internal grumbling over Republican healthcare message intensifies - The Hill

Republican leaders on Capitol Hill are facing a mini-rebellion against their message on healthcare reform.

State creates health care reform office - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Gov. Jim Doyle has created an Office of Health Care Reform to prepare for the sweeping changes from health care reform that take effect in 2014.

DNC tops Steele's record March for donations - Washington Times

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele can't seem to catch a break these days. On the day when the RNC announced a record fundraising haul for March, the rival Democratic National Committee revealed that it had collected an even bigger amount.

Man arrested for Nancy Pelosi threats - Politico

Federal agents in California have arrested a man for allegedly threatening House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

OPINION

Sebelius Begins Implementing Health Reform, Pushes Back Against State Claims Of Gov Takeover - Think Progress

Yesterday, during a speech at the National Press Club, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius laid out the path forward for implementing the new health care law. The Secretary promised that HHS would serve as a “help desk” for Americans confused about the new legislation and would guide seniors and small businesses in taking advantage of the immediate benefits from reform.

Insurers call halt, get state warning - Boston Globe

The standoff between Massachusetts regulators and health insurance companies intensified yesterday, as most insurers stopped offering new coverage to small businesses and individuals, and state officials demanded that the insurers post updated rates online and resume offering policies by Friday.

Healthcare reform will keep newborns with heart defects from insurance rejection - Star Telegram

Soon after President Barack Obama signed health reform, a local baby with a heart condition was rejected for insurance. The story became front-page news in Fort Worth and was picked up nationally.

How the F.B.I. Identified Murray’s Caller - New York Times

As the F.B.I. moved in on a man who allegedly threatened Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, because of her support for health care legislation, law enforcement agents faced a challenge: they needed to confirm that Charles A. Wilson, the man whose phone number was used to leave menacing messages on her office voicemail, was in fact the man who made the threats.

Health Secretary Warns of Insurance Scams - New York Times

The secretary of health and human services, Kathleen Sebelius, wrote to state officials on Tuesday to urge that they take action against “scam artists” reportedly marketing fake insurance policies to exploit the new law overhauling the health care system.

Pelosi describes effort behind health care reform - AP

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi described pushing through health care reform legislation as a fractious endeavor hampered by partisanship, but one she never doubted would succeed.

OPINION

Guest column: New health reform law will benefit Americans - Senator Harkin

The health reform law President Barack Obama signed on March 23 will transform America in important and positive ways. Indeed, it already has. Despite all the talk recently about how our nation has become divided and ungovernable, we have proved not only that we are governable, but also that we still have the capacity to act with boldness and vision.

Insurance Companies Drop Yet Another Ball - Change.org

According to MedPage Today via Kevin, MD, a recent study of health insurers' efforts to steer patients towards lower-cost physicians comes up short: "43 percent of physicians who are ranked as 'lower cost' doctors … are not actually treating patients for any less than physicians with comparable practice patterns." So insurers have basically no idea how to identify good value in medical practice. Raise your hand if you're surprised. Anyone?

Vast Majority Of States Aren't Challenging Health Care Bill - Media Matters

Almost immediately after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, conservative politicians deemed the bill unconstitutional. Decrying what they consider a government takeover of the health care industry, many Republicans who had refused to work on the legislation in good faith, are seeking to overturn the legislation in court.

Health insurers sue to raise rates - Boston Globe

A half-dozen health insurers yesterday filed a lawsuit against the state seeking to reverse last week’s decision by the insurance commissioner to block double-digit premium increases — a ruling they say could leave them with hundreds of millions in losses this year.

Swanson won't sue to stop health care reform - Minnesota Public Radio

Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson has rejected a request from Gov. Tim Pawlenty to sue over the new federal health care law.

Changes Coming To Insurance Plans - Kaiser Health News

Consumers and employers who provide health insurance are scrambling to understand what will change in their premiums and benefits once provisions of the recently passed law go into effect.

Big Lie: Healthcare Reform Won't Cost Texas $27B. More Like $1.4B - BNET

The Republican health and human services commissioner in Texas has wildly inflated the extra health costs that the state will incur under the national reform legislation. As U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) has pointed out, Tom Sueh’s estimate that reform will cost Texas $27 billion over 10 years is far more than the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of the cost for all states combined. But Texas will spend more than many other states to comply with the law, just because it currently underfunds Medicaid.

Battle over Abortion in Health Care Overhaul Moves to States - CBS

While a lengthy and controversial debate over abortion almost killed the Democrats' health care reform overhaul in Congress last month, at least two states are now taking the matter into their own hands.

OPINION

We Call That Double-Dipping - New York Times

Republican critics are continuing to pummel health care reform. Their newest charge is that the elimination of one generous tax deduction for retiree benefits would take such a bite out of corporate profits that companies may have to cut back on hiring, drop that retiree benefit, and shift added costs onto the taxpayer.

Pro-reform attorneys general on the offense - Washington Post

While the GOP repeal drive continues to crumble, some pro-reform state officials are now stepping up to defend the legal status of the Affordable Care Act. In states such as Georgia and Kentucky, Democratic attorneys general who support reform are now at loggerheads with state governors bent on joining the lawsuit against the federal government over its constitutionality. But there are pro-reform state officials who are becoming even more aggressive about getting out front and defending the bill.

Congress voted to overhaul the health care system on a Sunday. On Monday, Patti Lawson e-mailed her employer's human resources office to ask how soon she could get her 22-year-old daughter back on her health insurance.

In about six months, the new law will allow at least 2 million young adults to be covered by their parents' policies. These are the "millennials," those who came of age in the new century and now are struggling to get on their feet during the worst slump since the Depression.

Many can't find jobs, and many who are employed don't have health coverage from their employers.

The law will allow young adults to stay on or return to their parents' insurance until age 26. To qualify, young people must be "dependents" of their parents. They don't necessarily have to live under the same roof.

Current federal law has no minimum age for allowing people to stay on plans as dependents, and most policies allow children to stay on until they are 18, or until they graduate college. Some states force insurance companies to cover dependents until they are much older - into their 30s in some places - and these higher standards will supersede federal law. Still, this is the first time there has been a federal standard in place, and it will affect 2 million young adults - a demographic particularly struggling to find work, not to mention work that offers health benefits.

According to Kaiser Health News, which notes that some families will have very problematic coverage gaps until September when the new laws go into effect, the population this law serves is really in need:

Young adults make up one of the biggest groups of the uninsured. Forty-five percent of those between the ages of 19 and 29 were uninsured for at least part of 2009, according to a Commonwealth Fund survey last summer of 2,002 young adults. This figure is significantly higher than the 30 percent rate reported for 2008 by the Kaiser Family
Foundation’s Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, and may be a result of the continuing economic downturn. (Kaiser Health News is part of the foundation.)

Since many health plans require adult children to be full-time students in order to stay on their parents’ plans, young adults are at particularly high risk for losing coverage when they leave high school or college. The Commonwealth Fund survey found that although more than three-quarters of college students had health insurance while they were in school, 28 percent lost their coverage when they graduated or left school. Nearly half of those who were able to get new insurance experienced a gap in coverage; in many cases they were uninsured for a year or more.

It also should be noted that this policy will take a chunk out of insurance company profits.

The most profitable plans insurance companies sell are high-deductible junk insurance with medical loss ratios in the 70% range or even much lower and premium prices aimed at the out-of-work "young invincible" market. Allowing these people to stay on their parent's plan - usually a group health plan, the "blue chip" of the insurance market, with lower profit margins, higher medical loss ratios, and more stable and better benefits - takes away a big chunk of this customer pool, as people are more likely to have good jobs with good benefits the older they get.

Come September, young adults are winning, and the insurance companies are losing.

Angela Braly: WellPoint CEO Pay Jumps By 51 Percent - AP

The president and CEO of health insurer WellPoint Inc. received a 51 percent boost in compensation in 2009, mainly on larger grants of stock options and a performance bonus as profit and shares gained ground.

New Health Initiatives Put Spotlight on Prevention - New York Times

Amid all the rancor leading up to passage of the new health care law, Congress with little fanfare approved a set of wide-ranging public initiatives to prevent disease and encourage healthy behavior.

U.S. Wealthy Lack Easy Loopholes to Offset Obama’s Tax Plans - Business Week

Economist Arthur Laffer, 69, took a radical approach to rising income taxes four years ago: he moved to Tennessee from California.

Health reform final package ensures more funding for primary care - American Medial News

A newly enacted package of amendments will boost Medicaid rates and provide more community health center funding, but physician leaders say more help is needed.

Californians take generally positive view of healthcare reform - LA Times

A new Times/USC poll shows voters saying by a 46%-29% margin they would be more likely to vote for a politician who had backed the health bill. On immigration, the poll found continued polarization.

OPINION

Lessons from the Health-Care Wars - The American Prospect

On March 9, at least 5,000 protesters picketed outside the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Washington, D.C., where America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the powerful industry trade association, was holding its annual lobbying conference. About 50 public figures — including writer Barbara Ehrenreich, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger, AFL-CIO head Richard Trumka, the Center for Community Change's Deepak Bhargava, and former Congressman Bob Edgar — participated in civil disobedience. The following day, 24 insurance–industry victims — people who lost family members, are suffering because they were denied care, or went bankrupt due to premium costs — confronted reform opponents on Capitol Hill, including House Minority Whip Eric Cantor. One of the protesters was Marcus Grimes, a 38-year-old former teacher who worked at a D.C. charter school that didn't offer health insurance, and lacked the $3,000 down payment for doctor-recommended surgeries that would have saved his sight.

Obama's uphill battles continue - EJ Dionne

Toward the end of the health-care battle, a beleaguered Obama staff member sent me an e-mail that ended with the words: "Sisyphus was a sissy compared to what we've been through!"

2 million eager for health care on parents' plans - AP

Congress voted to overhaul the health care system on a Sunday. On Monday, Patti Lawson e-mailed her employer's human resources office to ask how soon she could get her 22-year-old daughter back on her health insurance.

Obama, in Maine, Needles Republicans Over Calls to Repeal Health Care Overhaul - New York Times

President Obama continued on Thursday what might be called his Go-for-It Tour, traveling to this Northeastern state — represented by two moderate Republican senators who balked at his health care overhaul — to dare the opposition party to run against it this fall.

Health care hikes rejected - Boston Globe

Making good on Governor Deval Patrick’s promise to reject health insurance rate increases deemed excessive, the state Division of Insurance yesterday denied 235 of 274 increases proposed by insurers for plans covering individuals and small businesses.

Insurer Fights Maine Regulator on Premiums - Wall Street Journal

As insurers wrestle with the changes coming from the federal health overhaul in Washington, they also face challenges at the state level from regulators seeking to head off big premium hikes. A court case in Maine underscores the tensions, with a health insurer battling a decision that zeroed out its profit to keep consumers' rates down.

Long-Term Care Program Debuts In New Health Law - NPR

It got precious little debate in either the House or Senate, and President Obama didn't even mention it when he signed the huge health bill into law. But buried within the new health care overhaul is the first-ever federal insurance program to help Americans meet the often crushing costs of long-term care.

Insurance Protection For Adult Children Won't Come Fast Enough For Some Parents - Kaiser Health News

When Allison McMaster Young heard that the new health overhaul law would allow her and her husband to keep their 21-year-old son on their family health insurance policy until age 26, she breathed a sigh of relief. Alex will graduate from Fordham University on May 21. Under the terms of the family plan they have through her husband’s job, he’ll lose his coverage the very next day because he’ll no longer be a full-time student. Keeping Alex on the family policy would be by far the simplest and most affordable way to keep him covered after graduating.

OPINION

Will Republicans Be Able To Defund Health Care Reform? - Think Progress

Over at the Hill’s Blog Briefing Room, Jordan Fabian is reporting that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), one of the earliest and most vocal advocates of repealing the health care reform law, is now backing a new plan “that he says would allow the Republicans to avoid a presidential veto while negating the effects of a new healthcare law.” “The 2008 GOP presidential nominee backed a plan that would strip funding from the healthcare law, which he says would not take an override to a veto to accomplish”.

Obama to promote health bill's business benefits - AP

President Barack Obama is promoting his health overhaul's benefits for small businesses as he tries to rally public support behind the new law scorned by Republicans and protesters

GOP hopes repeal-the-bill fire won't burn them - AP

Top Republicans are starting to worry about their health care rallying cry "Repeal the bill." It just might singe GOP candidates in November's elections, they fear, if voters begin to see benefits from the new law.

Health care's next chapter: A play for hearts and minds - USA Today

The election is seven months away, but for Democratic Rep. Steve Driehaus it may as well be tomorrow.

FactCheck.org Smacks Down The GOP's "16,500 New IRS Agents" Lie - Media Matters

In the final weeks of the health care debate, Republicans repeated the baseless claim that the Affordable Care Act required "16,500 additional IRS agents." The experts at FactCheck.org examined the claim yesterday and deemed it "wildly inaccurate."

States Hope New Funding From Health Law Will Bolster Unique Programs - Kaiser Health News

Starting today, states can choose to take the first steps toward the massive expansion of insurance coverage that is the health overhaul's chief goal. And for some states, that move could have the benefit of reviving funding for state-run programs that insure low-income adults.

Cuccinelli’s office denies records on health-care suit - Richmond Times-Dispatch

Records that would document the time, resources and meetings involved in the lawsuit that the Virginia attorney general's office filed against federal health-care legislation either don't exist or are classified as confidential "working papers" of the agency, a ranking deputy said yesterday.

OPINION

WellPoint Reclassifies Costs As ‘Medical Care’ To Meet Reform’s Medical Loss Ratio Requirement - Think Progress

The health care law tries to control premium costs and insurer profits in the period between now and 2014 in two big ways: 1) it requires insurers to spent a certain percentage of their dollars on medical care and 2) it allows the Department of Health and Human Services to work with the states to disqualify insurers with outrageous rate hikes from participating in the exchanges.

Now that health reform has become law, the Chamber is continuing to play the role of insurance company lap dog.

In keeping close to its corporate masters, the Chamber first threw a wrench in the tea party-fueled repeal movement, declaring it won't work for a repeal of the new law. (This issue has split the Republican party wide open, with many prominent Republicans arguing for repeal and many others arguing against it.) It then jumped on board with the insurance industry's game plan: Attempt to duck new responsibilities, which it has so far tried and failed to do surrounding the issue of covering children with pre-existing conditions.

The Chamber signaled its cooperation in a letter dated March 29th from Chamber President Thomas Donohue to the Chamber Board of Directors.

In the letter, Donohue lays out the insurance industry's strategy: Work against implementation of health reform by creating as many holes in regulations as possible:

…we will assign a team of our most skilled and experienced staff to participate in the years-long process of writing the thousands of pages of federal regulations that will implement the many provisions in this legislation.

We will be submitting comments, proposing language, and seeking changes in an effort to minimize the potentially harmful impacts of this bill on our members and the country. Should federal regulators attempt to exceed legislative mandates or try for end-runs around the lawful rulemaking process, Chamber lawyers will take legal action.

But they're not stopping at simply trying to evade laws. The Chamber will also spend $50 million to try and defeat Democrats who voted for health reform in 2010 - mostly on the same type of misleading ads they've been running up until now. This money, like their previous money, likely comes directly from the insurance companies, who are too timid to level their political attacks under their own name.

As I noted yesterday, the spat with insurance companies over covering care for children with pre-existing conditions is just the first test of how the insurance industry will respond to both the letter and spirit of the new law. Through the Chamber, they will endeavor to weasel out of anything and everything they can.

It's up to the Department of Health and Human Services, the President, and Congress to make sure they follow the new law of the land, or to enact new legislation and rules to force them to comply (or introduce, say, a public option to provide a public interest alternative). The health of the American people depends on it.

Business Bids to Shape Health Changes - Wall Street Journal

Chamber of Commerce Plans Effort to Challenge New Regulations and Unseat Those Who Voted for Law

Obama takes final steps on reform - Politico

President Barack Obama went across the Potomac River on Tuesday to put the final touches on health care reform and enact a massive overhaul of the nation’s student loan system.

Dem AGs rebuff GOP govs on health-care lawsuits - Washington Post

Republican governors in two western states want to join in legal challenges to recent federal health care legislation, but each is meeting stiff resistance from the same obstacle: an attorney general from the rival party.

GOP leaders temper call for repealing health law, saying jobs, economy are key to fall races - LA Times

Top Republicans are increasingly worried that GOP candidates this fall might be burned by a fire that's roaring through the conservative base: demand for the repeal of President Barack Obama's new health care law.

The health-care law: Answers to frequently asked questions - Washington Post

The health-care bill is more than 2,000 pages long — with hundreds more to come from regulators filling in the details. It will take years before all the details are set and people can see how the plan will affect their situation. But here are some commonly asked questions that can be answered now.

Small businesses fret over details of health law - Washington Post

Small-business owner Joe Ascioti says Massachusetts' 2006 health care law has left him facing $15,000 in fines since it took effect. Now, he's worried the nation's new health care overhaul could bring similar woes to employers nationwide.

OPINION

Republicans Struggle Over How To React To Health Care's Passage - Media Matters

The Republican Party is struggling with how to respond to the passage of the Affordable Care Act. Some say the GOP should campaign on repealing the bill, while others don't.  Below is a brief compilation of who falls into what camp.

Health Care Reform's Untold Wins for Women - Change.org

It's not difficult to see why many women (and men who care about women) are having a hard time grappling with the excitement of health care reform actually passing and the reality of its many failures to women. Women surely suffered the brunt of all the compromises required to get the thing passed: it chips away at low-income women's reproductive rights, and forbids federal funding for a procedure that gives women agency over their own bodies and that the Supreme Court has deemed to be legal under the Constitution.

In six months, the new law says children can no longer be denied care for pre-existing conditions. But the insurance companies immediately said they'd found a loophole:

Insurers agree that if they provide insurance for a child, they must cover pre-existing conditions. But, they say, the law does not require them to write insurance for the child and it does not guarantee the “availability of coverage” for all until 2014.

William G. Schiffbauer, a lawyer whose clients include employers and insurance companies, said: “The fine print differs from the larger political message. If a company sells insurance, it will have to cover pre-existing conditions for children covered by the policy. But it does not have to sell to somebody with a pre-existing condition. And the insurer could increase premiums to cover the additional cost.”

Secretary Sebelius immediately fired back with a letter to Karen Ignagni, head of AHIP, the insurance industry's main lobbying arm. The letter made clear the administration's intention to issue regulations to enforce both the spirit and letter of the new law, including covering children with pre-existing conditions and providing both access to plans and benefits. And today, it seems the insurance industry relented:

In a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, the industry's top lobbyist said insurers will accept new regulations to dispel uncertainty over a much-publicized guarantee that children with medical problems can get coverage starting this year.

…

"Health plans recognize the significant hardship that a family faces when they are unable to obtain coverage for a child with a pre-existing condition," Karen Ignagni, president of America's Health Insurance Plans, said in a letter to Sebelius. Ignagni said that the industry will "fully comply" with the regulations, expected within weeks.

It remains to be seen exactly how this particular battle will play out. While insurance companies say they'll comply with regulations to issue policies and provide benefits to children with pre-existing conditions, there is no talk about the cost of such policies. Still, for families currently unable to get coverage for their sick children at any price, even this modest change in practices will be a relief, though the bigger changes - including the subsidies to make insurance not only accessible but affordable - don't go into effect until 2014.

This is the first of what will be many battles with the insurance companies over regulation. The administration and the new regulatory structures put into place by health reform won the first skirmish. But there's no doubt that insurance companies will throw many obstacles in our way as we move towards guaranteed health care for all. We'll have to keep fighting them and their army of lawyers and lobbyists as health reform is implemented and improved upon in the years to come.

It's still true that if the insurance companies win, we lose.

Insurance industry agrees to fix kids coverage gap - AP

After battling President Barack Obama's health care overhaul the better part of a year, the insurance industry said Monday it won't try to block his efforts to fix a potentially embarrassing glitch in the new law.

Obama set to sign health care 'fixes' bill - CNN

President Obama is set to claim final victory on his top domestic priority Tuesday by signing into law a package of changes to the newly enacted health care reform bill.

Overhaul Will Lower the Costs of Being a Woman - New York Times

Being a woman is no longer a pre-existing condition. That’s the new mantra, repeated triumphantly by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senator Barbara A. Mikulski and other advocates for women’s health. But what does it mean?

Stimulus stumbles hold lessons for health care sell - Politico

As President Barack Obama  prepares to roll out the health care reform plan, he can look to one recent case study in how not to do it – the economic stimulus package.

Companies Push to Repeal Provision of Health Law - New York Times

An association representing 300 large corporations urged President Obama and Congress on Monday to repeal a provision of the health care overhaul that prompted AT&T, Caterpillar and other companies to announce substantial charges for the current quarter.

OPINION

If States Are Against Health Reform, Why Haven’t They All Left Medicaid? - Think Progress

On Sunday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) suggested that the Republican effort to repeal health care reform will dominate the 2010 midterm elections, state government and “every statehouse in the nation“.

In Colorado, they visited Senators Bennet and Udall:

In Missouri, they thanked Congressman Carnahan:

In Pennsylvania, they're thanking Congressman Kanjorski:

In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a large group welcomed home Congresswoman Gwen Moore at the airport:

And Congressman Kagan, also from Wisconsin:

In Washington, they hailed the passage of reform and protested against a planned state lawsuit against the new law:

In Florida, they thanked Congressman Grayson and Congresswoman Kosmas:

In Indiana, they were out thanking Congressman Ellsworth:

In North Dakota, the people were out thanking Representative Pomeroy:

In Arkansas, they were out thanking Representative Snyder:

In Maine, they thanked Congressman Michaud:

In Minnesota, they thanked Representative Walz:

And more to come as health reform becomes the law of the land.

Coverage Now for Sick Children? Check Fine Print - New York Times

Just days after President Obama signed the new health care law, insurance companies are already arguing that, at least for now, they do not have to provide one of the benefits that the president calls a centerpiece of the law: coverage for certain children with pre-existing conditions.

Health-care overhaul leaves Democrats in stable condition - Washington Post

After steering the landmark health-care reform bill through Congress, the Democratic Party's leaders have emerged mostly unscathed, according to a new Washington Post poll, but they have not received a notable boost in approval ratings.

Closing Medicare Drug Gap Helps Democrats Sell Reform - Kaiser Health News

Now that the health overhaul has passed Congress, Democratic lawmakers are hoping to highlight its most immediate benefits. Chief among them: a plan to help millions of elderly and disabled Medicare beneficiaries pay for their medications by gradually eliminating a drug-coverage gap commonly known as the “doughnut hole.”

Health care law becomes personal for Dallas-area families - Dallas Morning News

Even among families that stand to benefit from last week's passage of the health care law, opinions are split.

Like many Democrats, some Dallas-area families see the overhaul as a historic achievement that will lead to better health care for millions of Americans.

GOP views Supreme Court as last line of defense on health reform - The Hill

Republicans view Chief Justice John Roberts and the Supreme Court as a last line of defense against the new healthcare reform law.

OPINION

Cows on the Track - Gerald McEntee

Michael Steele, the hapless chairman of the Republican National Committee, was asked a while back by Fox News how he would stop health care reform. "I will be the cow on the track," he answered. Steele believed that President Obama's historic effort to end the ongoing abuses of the insurance industry could be stopped even after it had passed both the House and the Senate. As a video posted on the DailyKos website makes clear, cows can't stop trains. Yet this hasn't stopped Republican officials all across the country from stepping up to be cows on the track now that health care reform has been signed into law.

The Legal Assault on Health Reforms - New York Times

No sooner had President Obama signed comprehensive health care reform than the attorneys general of 14 states scurried to the federal courts to challenge the law. Their claims range from far-fetched to arguable and look mostly like political posturing for the fall elections or a “Hail Mary” pass by disgruntled conservatives who cannot accept what Congress and the president have done.

Now What? - Atul Gawande

On July 30, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed Medicare into law. In public memory, what ensued was the smooth establishment of a popular program, but in fact Medicare faced a year of nearly crippling rearguard attacks. The American Medical Association had waged war to try to stop the program, and doctors weren’t about to abandon the fight against “socialized medicine” simply because it had passed into law. The Ohio Medical Association, with ten thousand physician members, declared that it would boycott Medicare, and a nationwide movement began. Race proved an even more explosive issue. Many hospitals, especially in the South, were segregated, and the law required them to integrate in order to receive Medicare dollars. Alabama’s Governor George Wallace was among those who encouraged resistance; just two months before coverage was to begin, half the hospitals in a dozen Southern states had still refused to meet Medicare certification.

A Rumor That Won't Die - Jon Cohn

Just now on CNN, the hosts will reading recent viewer e-mails about health care reform. Among them was an e-mail attacking the new law. If health care reform is so good, the writer wanted to know, why are politicians exempting themselves from it?

I've heard critics of the bill, from Republican senators to random internet writers, say this many times. And it's frustrating, because it's not true.

Are Democrats Better Off for Having Passed Health Care? Yes — and No. - FiveThirtyEight

More polling data is starting to pour in on health care reform and it generally contains decent, but not great, numbers for Democrats. Most of the polls show a bump of some kind in approval for health care reform — but it's not as large as that implied by the USA Today/Gallup one-day poll that was released on Tuesday. If we take an average of the four polls that have been conducted entirely after the health care bill passed the House, rather (those from Gallup, Rasmussen, Quinnipiac and CBS), they average out to 43 percent in favor and 46 percent opposed. Those are numbers that I think Democrats would gladly take relative to where health care has been in the past, but it's not exactly as though the bill has become wildly popular — nor is it likely to do so in advance of the midterms.

The legislation that is now the law of the land was just the first step. Despite its size — more than 2,000 pages — the bill in many cases only lays out Congressional intent. In that sense, it is a framework for reform. The law requires that numerous new regulations be written to govern the way health insurers do business, a responsibility that Congress passed on not only to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services but also to one very influential non-governmental organization: the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC). The bill mentions the NAIC — an acronym most Americans probably only see once a year when they renew their cars' license plates — at least 10 times, and it gives the organization some very important assignments.

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Final Votes in Congress Cap Battle on Health Bill - New York Times

Congress on Thursday gave final approval to a package of changes to the Democrats’ sweeping health care overhaul, capping a bitter partisan battle over the most far-reaching social legislation in nearly half a century.

Barack Obama to GOP: 'Go for it' - Politico

President Barack Obama challenged Republicans Thursday to bring on the debate if they plan to run on a platform of repealing the health care reform bill he signed into law just two days ago.

In Iowa, Obama Calls Health Bill ‘Pro-Business’ - New York Times

President Obama on Thursday began an aggressive White House public relations blitz to sell his newly signed health care overhaul to a skeptical and sometimes confused public, calling the measure “pro-jobs” and “pro-business” and taunting Republicans who are vowing to repeal it.

The First Test Of New Health Law: Covering Hard-To-Insure People - Kaiser Health News

It’s the first and one of the hardest tests of the Democrats’ ambitious plan to overhaul the nation’s health care system: in the next 90 days establishing a federally funded program to cover people turned down by private insurers because they have a pre-existing medical condition.

Students to see impact from health care reform - The Reflector

After months of debate, President Barack Obama signed the health care reform bill Tuesday, creating future changes to health care for the United States.

OPINION

Now Comes the Hard Part - Jon Cohn

HEALTH care reform, the most ambitious domestic policy initiative of our time, is now law. And already there is talk of how to make it even better. Some want to improve the subsidies and financial protections, so that people aren’t as exposed to high medical bills. Others would like to add some sort of public option, whether it’s a new stand-alone government-run plan or expanded access to Medicare.

David Frum, AEI, Heritage And Health Care - Paul Krugman

David Frum* has been fired by the American Enterprise Institute; one has to assume that this is a response to his outspokenness about the Republican failure on health reform.

How does the individual mandate work? - Ezra Klein

So long as legal challenges to the individual mandate are in the news, we might as well be clear about what the mandate is, and how it works.

What’s in the Affordable Care Act? - Matt Yglesias

Ben Smith has an insightful item on the Democrats’ decision to “embrace the freakshow” by trying to focus attention on the existence of a violent fringe of opposition to the Affordable Care Act that’s clearly inspired by the unhinged nature of the discourse around ACA that all-too-mainstream figures on the right have created.

After the bill is passed, there are two phases to think about - before exchanges are set up and after they're running in 2014.

Before exchanges are established, the Department of Health and Human Services and other related federal authorities will work with states to implement the law. First, the states will have to bring their state health insurance laws in line with the federal regulations. States are free to go farther than federal regulations if they want, but their laws must be at least as strong as the federal ones.

Every year from 2010 on, insurers will have to make public data on their business practices. The summary of the provision in the bill explains:

…plans seeking certification by Exchanges [must] publicly disclose, in plain language, information on claims payment policies, enrollment, denials, rating practices, out-of-network cost-sharing, and enrollee rights. [They must also] provide information to enrollees on the amount of cost-sharing for a specific item or service.

Using that information, HHS and the states will be required to conduct annual reviews of insurance companies looking for business in the future exchanges. Rate increases must be taken into account during this process under the law and, to gain entry into the exchanges, plans will have to meet minimum standard benefits levels set by the Secretary. Those standards will be developed in a process that the bill says has to be public and accountable to Congress. The benefit package must, by law, be equivalent to coverage you'd get in the large-group market, creating parity in benefits between the individual and large group markets that doesn't exist now.

When it comes time to set up the exchanges, the states must use their annual reviews to determine which insurers get access to the new customers. If a state fails to make progress or follow the law in setting up an Exchange, HHS can step in and set up an exchange under federal authority.

After 2014 when the exchanges are running, HHS continues to play a role in state exchanges.

The states either run the exchanges or contract with a non-profit agency to run them. The Exchange administrators must evaluate insurance companies yearly on quality and price metrics and whether or not the insurers in the exchanges are conforming to the new regulations - no benefit caps, limits on out-of-pocket expenses, no denials for pre-existing conditions, no charging more if you're sick, etc…

The Exchange administrators have the power to deny certification for insurance plans with unreasonable premium increases - in other words, kick them out of the state exchange - and will require a whole new level of transparency from plans, so consumers can understand their rights in plain language. And HHS oversees the operations, making sure state exchanges follow the new law.

Byrd Rule To Send Health Care Back To House, Rules Parliamentarian - Huffington Post

Senate Republicans succeeded early Thursday morning in finding two flaws in the House-passed health care reconciliation package. Neither is of any substance, but the Senate parliamentarian informed Democratic leaders that both are in violation of the Byrd Rule.

Lawmakers concerned as health-care overhaul foes resort to violence - Washington Post

The pitched battle over health care has unleashed a rash of vandalism and attacks directed at politicians, with at least 10 House Democrats reporting death threats or incidents of harassment or vandalism at their district offices over the past week.

The Most Ridiculous Amendments To The Health Care Reconciliation Bill - Huffington Post

Republicans know that the health care reform process could be derailed if the Senate decides to adopt any changes in reconciling the bill passed by the House on Sunday.

So, GOP Senators have introduced a variety of provocative — and occasionally outrageous amendments — that Democrats who support the health care bill will be forced to vote against in order to get the reconciliation bill through.

Administration: Health lawsuit 'without merit' - The Hill

The Obama administration on Wednesday blasted as bogus a lawsuit filed by states against the new healthcare law.

Va Democrats liken Cuccinelli suit against health care bill to '50s desegregation fight - AP

Virginia Democrats are drawing parallels between the state's court fight to stop new health coverage mandates and its battle 50 years ago against federal orders to open businesses and schools to black people.

Lieberman, Webb to Vote ‘Yes’ on Reconciliation - Roll Call

Sens. Joe Lieberman (ID-Conn.) and Jim Webb (D-Va.) announced Wednesday that they would support the reconciliation package, although they indicated during floor remarks that they have lingering concerns about the legislation as well as the Senate health care overhaul signed into law by President Barack Obama on Tuesday.

Funds Double for Health Clinics - Wall Street Journal

Federally funded health clinics are set to play an even larger role in the revamped health-care landscape, which expands Medicaid and other insurance coverage and sharply increases funding for the clinics.

OPINION

Why Are We Taking The State Repeal Lawsuits Seriously? - Think Progress

Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway announced yesterday that “he will not file a lawsuit against the federal government in trying to refuse the legislation.” “I do not intend to use my authority as Kentucky Attorney General to sign our Commonwealth onto a health care lawsuit against the federal government, because I will not waste taxpayer dollars on a political stunt,” Conway said. “Trey Grayson’s gimmick may be good ‘tea party’ politics, but it’s based on questionable legal principles,” Conway said, referring to the Secretary of State’s request that he file a lawsuit.

And Now the Real Work Begins - The New Republic

Maybe it’s good that right after President Obama’s health reform signing ceremony, the Senate went right back to work to improve it. It sends the important signal that this isn’t the end of health reform, but the beginning of a new phase.

Rep. Issa Doesn't Denounce Death Threats, Instead Attacks "Bought Votes" - Media Matters

During an appearance on Fox Business Network's "Happy Hour," Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) was asked about recent extremism that has resulted in Democratic members of Congress being victimized by vandalism and death threats.

I don't care how low [the insurance companies] drive support for [health reform] with misinformation, the minute the President signs a health reform bill approval will go up because Americans are inherently optimistic.

Yesterday, President Obama signed the health reform bill into law. Today, President Clinton is rapidly being proved right.

A new poll from Gallup/USA Today shows that health reform is already becoming popular in America:

As the days pass, I expect those numbers will continue to climb. Bill Clinton does, too, as he continued in his keynote:

Within a year, when all those bad things they say are going to happen don't happen and the good things do begin to happen, approval will explode.

Within the next six months, a large number of American people will already see the effects of health reform:

• Insurance companies will be barred from dropping coverage if you're sick, and lifetime and annual benefit caps will be restricted (to be banned fully in 2014)
• Young people will be able to stay on their parents' insurance coverage until they are 26, whereas most insurance companies drop dependent coverage now at the age of 19 or after completion of college.
• Seniors will get $250 towards the donut hole coverage gap
• Small businesses will be able to deduct 35% of the cost of health care for their employees
• And those with pre-existing conditions will be able to finally get insurance through a temporary high-risk pool run by the government

With politically important groups like young people, small business, and seniors seeing real benefits from health reform before the November elections, Bill Clinton will be proven prescient once again.

As President Clinton said, America is going to like health reform, and once they get their hands on the benefits, they're going to fight to keep it and make it better in the future.

Obama Signs Health Care Overhaul Bill, With a Flourish - New York Times

With the strokes of 20 pens, President Obama signed his landmark health care overhaul — the most expansive social legislation enacted in decades — into law on Tuesday, saying it enshrines “the core principle that everybody should have some basic security when it comes to their health care.”

Poll show health care plan gains favor - USA Today

More Americans now favor than oppose the health care overhaul that President Obama signed into law Tuesday, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds — a notable turnaround from surveys before the vote that showed a plurality against the legislation.

Senate Begins Debate on Health-Care Bill - Wall Street Journal

The U.S. Senate began debate Tuesday on legislation combining the last pieces to the Democratic overhaul of the health-care system and a shake-up to the student-loan industry, commencing what promises to be a contentious few days.

Ted Kennedy is celebrated for his longtime support of health-care reform - Washington Post

While President Obama gathered with lawmakers for a bill-signing ceremony in the East Room of the White House on Tuesday afternoon, dozens of others came to commemorate health-care legislation here, on a quiet hillside in Section 45 of Arlington National Cemetery.

Justice Department readies health care bill defense - Politico

The Justice Department is preparing to defend the health care reform legislation signed by President Barack Obama today against a flurry of lawsuits challenging its constitutionality, department officials said. In fact, according to a DOJ spokeswoman, government lawyers were gearing up for the legal battle even before the bill became law.

GOP healthcare protest breaks-up Senate committee business - The Hill

Senate Republicans protesting healthcare reform forced the cancellation of several scheduled committee hearings on Tuesday.

Democrat ‘no’ votes on healthcare legislation anger labor unions - The Hill

Unions are likely to rescind their backing of labor-friendly lawmakers who voted against the healthcare bill and may support challengers.

Hold pickle? Maybe, but not the calorie count under new law - Washington Post

That Caesar salad you’re about to eat? It’s 800 calories, and that’s without the croutons. The fettuccine alfredo? A whopping 1,220 calories. You may choose to ignore the numbers, but soon it’s going to be tough to deny you saw them.

OPINION

Repeal drive loses steam - Ezra Klein

Republicans were using the word "repeal" a lot in the hours after the House voted to pass the health-care reform bill. But as the hours turn to days, they're talking about repeal less, qualifying it more, and even finding themselves mentioning things they like about the bill. Suzy Khimm runs through the changing rhetoric.

Health Care Changes You Won't Have To Wait Four Years For - Change.org

Listening to the rhetoric on the House floor Sunday night (anyone count the number of times we heard the word "historic"?), you could be forgiven for getting the impression that the moment the gavel came down, the country would be forever transformed into a social justice utopia or a Soviet republic, depending on which side you were listening to.

Gallup Sees Speedy Public Opinion Turnaround After Affordable Care Act Is Signed - Matt Yglesias

Throughout the winter of 2009-2010, folks like me were arguing that if members of congress just put their heads down and charged ahead with health care that this would improve the polling situation around their proposals. This was widely greeted on the right as a kind of fantastical wishful thinking, but check out Gallup’s latest numbers.

CIGNA CEO Admits Insurers Will Increase Premiums In The Near Future - Think Progress

CIGNA CEO David Cordani appeared on Your World with Neil Cavuto yesterday to argue that health care premiums will continue to increase, despite the passage of health care reform. Acting as if insurers had no say in the matter Cordani blamed providers for any anticipated rate hikes. “Over the near term, the legislation did nothing to reduce the cost equation. In fact, aspects of the legislation actually increase the cost equation so the positive is, it expanded access, the negative is, it did nothing to reduce costs and will actually drive costs higher for insured lives of the next four to five years.”

Nebraska’s Attorney General Suing To Stop Reform Is Clueless About Existing Federal Law - Think Progress

“Seven minutes after” President Obama signed into law historic health care legislation that will extend health insurance to tens of millions of Americans, 13 GOP state Attorneys General sued the federal government on grounds that the health care bill is unconstitutional.

In Iowa delivering cakes to Congressmen Braley and Loebsack:

In Maine, thanking Representatives Pingree and Michaud:

In New Mexico, thanking Representative Heinrich:

In New York:

And in Illinois:

With more to come…

This year, over 4 million small businesses will get tax credits worth up to 35% of their health care costs. This year, seniors will get $250 towards closing their coverage donut hole. This year, young Americans will be able to stay on their parent's insurance plan until they are 26. This year, lifetime caps on benefits will be a thing of the past. And this year, the people with pre-existing conditions who can't get health care now at any price will be able to buy into high-risk pools until the exchanges are set up in 2014.

But we are not done. Right after the House passed the health care bill on Sunday, they passed a package of improvements that now head to the Senate for an up-or-down vote.

The fixes heading to the Senate are mostly focused on making health care affordable to middle class families.

First, the package vastly improves the excise tax on "Cadillac" insurance plans, raising the threshold at which a plan will be affected to $10,200 for individual plans and $27,500 for family coverage. It also delays the implementation of the tax until 2018. As a result, the burden on middle tax families will be dramatically reduced.

To make up for the loss in revenue, the fixes broaden the Medicare payroll tax on on rich investors, taxing net investment income for those who make more than $250,000 per year.

And second, the package increases the subsidies available in the exchanges for middle class families and lowers their cost sharing. With the package, a lower percentage of a family's income will be spent on health care costs - both premiums and out of pocket.

And there are more provisions in the package that would help broad swaths of the American public:

• The package fully closes the donut hole for seniors over time
• It freezes Medicare Advantage overpayments to private insurers and requires private insurers to pay 85% of money in to benefits in Medicare Advantage, to match the levels for all insurance plans in the health care bill
• It strikes the deals Senators like Ben Nelson received and replaces them with increased Medicaid funding to all states
• And it funds student loans for millions of young Americans

The Senate, after a string of favorable parliamentary rulings, is expected to take up the improvements under budget reconciliation rules today, with the goal of a final vote at the end of this week before the Easter recess.

Obama to Sign Health Care Reform Into Law Tuesday Morning - Roll Call

President Barack Obama will sign health care reform into law late Tuesday morning and all lawmakers who supported the bill are invited to attend the ceremony, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday.

What does the health care bill mean to me? - Washington Post

The health-care overhaul will change the way millions of Americans get health insurance and require nearly everyone to have health insurance or face penalties. A number of factors - including income, age, location and family size - will determine how it specifically impacts your life. This tool looks at what it could mean for your health coverage and taxes based on your income, family size and current insurance status.

Senate Democrats get favorable ruling - Politico

A ruling by Senate parliamentarian Alan Frumin handed Democrats a major victory Monday night, beating back a GOP push to declare a key tax proposal in the health care bill out of order.

First wave of health-care changes will target insurers with new rules - Washington Post

In affixing his signature Tuesday to comprehensive health-care legislation, President Obama will set in motion a fundamental shift across a sprawling industry, from insurers who will face an expanding list of restrictions to hospitals and doctors confronted with new incentives to practice more-efficient care.

'Fix-it' bill: Final fight on health care front - USA Today

Senate Democrats vowed to start debate today on a series of changes to President Obama's landmark health care legislation, launching the final battle in the year-long effort to revamp the nation's health insurance system.

Unions irked at Space over health care 'no' vote - Newark Advocate

Two unions representing tens of thousands of Ohio workers said Monday they would no longer support the state's only Democratic congressman to oppose President Barack Obama's health care bill.

Nelson to oppose reconciliation package, cites student lending - The Hill

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) said Monday he would vote against a reconciliation package that included changes to healthcare reform and student lending legislation.

Republicans Face Drawbacks of United Stand on Health Bill - New York Times

Passage of the health care legislation challenges the heart of the Republicans’ strategy this year: To present a unified opposition to big Democratic ideas, in this case expressed in a stream of bristling anger and occasional mischaracterizations of what the bill would do.

OPINION

Why The Vote Changes The Health Care Debate Forever - Jon Cohn

So said Jim DeMint, the Republican senator and presidential hopeful, speaking one day after health care reform passed the House of Representatives, clearing the final legislative hurdle to enactment. And it’s a sentiment you hear a lot on the right these days. Over the last week or so, as passage seemed ever more likely, Republicans moved from denial to anger: If they couldn’t stop this bill from becoming a law, they would stop the law from taking effect.

The Big Change Moment - Mike Lux

You know, for all the ups and downs of this process, for all the compromises we had to make to get here, when you see the tens of millions of dollars insurance companies were pouring into lies to defeat this bill, and see John Lewis called a nigger, and Barney Frank called a fag, and see all supporters of this bill called Stalinist, it makes you pretty confident you're on the right side of history.

Vote of weakness: Altmire betrays the Democrats and his district - Post-Gazette

When history came calling, Jason Altmire turned away.

CNN Poll: Majority Of Americans Support Bill Or Wish It Was More "Liberal" - Media Matters

Echoing many on the right, Newt Gingrich today sent an email claiming, "In every recent poll the vast majority of Americans opposed this monstrosity."

Why The Republicans’ Efforts To Invalidate Health Care Reform Will Likely Fail - Think Progress

Republicans are responding to last night’s historic passage of health care reform legislation by threatening to run a campaign to repeal it. In fact, moments after the House passed the bill, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) told protesters, “tomorrow, we’re going to file a discharge petition at the desk. We’re going to get every Republican to sign it and anybody else. If we get 218 signatures, Nancy Pelosi is forced to bring the repeal bill to the floor for a vote.” “Because we are putting the marker down now. We’re going to continue to fight to repeal this thing and we’re filing it tomorrow,” Bachmann added.

Constitutional Objections to Health Reform - Matt Yglesias

A surprising number of grassroots rightwingers have been misled by the erstwhile intellectual and political leaders of the conservative movement into believing that there’s a viable constitutional challenge to health reform. This has become kind of a feedback loop, where politicians seeking conservative bona fides need to pretend to believe in the viability of the constitutional challenge even to the point of having state Attorneys-General file frivolous lawsuits in defense of the status quo. The more that conservative elites indulge these fantasies, the more the grassroots believes in them. Which makes it all the harder for elites to bring themselves back into line.