This piece was produced in conjunction with the Huffington Post. Arthur Delaney, Huffington Post: Congressman Eric Massa (DN.Y.) led a protest Monday outside the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Washington, site of the 2009 national conference of America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), a trade group for the health insurance industry. “We are not radicals! We are not a fringe element!” shouted Massa, who opted not to use the bullhorn provided by protest organizers. “We are the 48 million Americans who cannot access health care today!” To read the full article: www.huffingtonpost.com
About a thousand California Health Professional Student Alliance marchers and supporters gathered on the steps of the Capitol in Sacramento to rally for single payer health care reform–their fifth annual event. Featured speaker was Senator Mark Leno, author of SB 810, California OneCare, the single payer bill now making its way through the legislature. The bill is expected to pass late in the summer of 2010.
Madame Speaker, it has been 133 days since the Republicans promised to present their health insurance reform legislation and we still have no alternative plan from them. Saying no to health insurance reform hurts millions of Americans who lack health insurance. The fastest growing group of uninsured is older Americans, age 50-64. It used to be that after working most of your life here in America you could retire to someplace warm and sunny, like my state of Florida. But there was a 36 percent increase in the number of older Americans without insurance from 2000 to 2009. There were 7.1 million uninsured people aged 50 to 64 in 2007. How can we allow more than 7 million Americans over 50, many who have worked their entire life, to go without health insurance? They certainly cant afford to retire when theyre worried about how to afford to pay for their medical bills. In the absence of an official health care bill, Republicans point to a bunch of different solutions offered by their members including dismantling or privatizing Medicare. So which plan do they stand behind? Americans deserve to know.
Today, the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations held a hearing entitled “Terminations of Individual Health Policies by Insurance Companies.” The hearing examined the practice of “post-claims underwriting,” which occurs when insurance companies cancel individual health insurance policies after providers submit claims for medical services rendered. The Committee conducted an investigation into the practice of health insurance rescission, and the results were alarming. Over the past five years, almost 20000 individual insurance policyholders have had their policies rescinded by the three insurance companies who testified today: Assurant, UnitedHealth Group, and WellPoint.
What are you doing to stem the rising costs of health care and insurance premiums? Michael Soman, MD: We’re implementing a new way of providing primary care in all 26 of our medical centers. We believe this approach will better serve our patients, bring our costs down, and help reduce premiums — even while improving quality Join the conversation www.ghc.org
Today, the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations held a hearing entitled “Terminations of Individual Health Policies by Insurance Companies.” The hearing examined the practice of “post-claims underwriting,” which occurs when insurance companies cancel individual health insurance policies after providers submit claims for medical services rendered. The Committee conducted an investigation into the practice of health insurance rescission, and the results were alarming. Over the past five years, almost 20000 individual insurance policyholders have had their policies rescinded by the three insurance companies who testified today: Assurant, UnitedHealth Group, and WellPoint.