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Rachel points out that the states that have the most elected representatives opposed to health care/insurance reform are also the same ones that rank the worst in a number of national health metrics, such as HPV vaccination rates, teenage pregnancy, premature births, lowest birth weight and infant mortality.
As Rachel notes, you'd think they'd be the states most concerned with rather than opposed to some real reform of our health care system.
(I have been doing some work as a blogger fellow with Brave New Films on their Sick For Profit campaign. Visit us on Facebook.)
Today Brave New Films released their second installment in the Sick For Profit series, taking a look at the corrupt practices of CIGNA, denying care to their customers while their lead executives rake in millions and lead lavish lifestyles.
Meet Jo Joshua Godfrey. She had cancer without knowing for over a year.
"I would go to CIGNA and they would tell me I had bronchitis and give me medicine and send me home. No matter what medicine they gave me I wouldn't get better. Then the CIGNA Director called me up and she told me that there was nothing wrong with me at all. I called the doctor, and I came with my film and my CAT scan and he just put it in, it took exactly thirty seconds. He told me, 'You have cancer,' and he said the reason CIGNA did not want to give you your records is they've known right way back for years that you have cancer and they're not going to treat you."
CIGNA took in $19.1 billion dollars in revenue last year, with a $292 million dollar income. That doesn't include the salaries given to people like CEO Ed Hanway. He made a cool $12 million last year, and over the past five years he took in $120 million. Hanway has $28 million in unexcercised stock options. The company corporate jets, also not seen in profit statements, cost $68 million. This money is gained, as former communications director Wendell Potter says in this video, through denying claims and dumping the sick, enhancing the value of the company for Wall Street investors. The effect on people's lives, meanwhile, is tragic. Nataline Sarkysian, featured in the Americans United For Change advertisement, lost her life after CIGNA repeated denied her a liver transplant, despite the family having full coverage.
Meet Stephen Coddington, the wife of Marian, a stroke victim:
The case manager at the nursing home called me in and was really upset, and she said, "CIGNA is wanting to discontinue therapy with her. The doctors called and appeals were denied." It has been a day-in and day-out fight. Every talk that I've had with them, it's been, how can we wiggle off this hook.
This is the human cost for an insurance company's existence, for the record profits and supreme lifestyle of their executives. Welcome to the American health insurance industry. Instead of helping policyholders attain the health security they need for their families, big insurance companies get rich by denying coverage to patients. Now they're sending lobbyists to Washington, DC to twist the arms of lawmakers to oppose reform of the status quo. Why? Because the status quo pays.
CIGNA is not a special case in the insurance industry. It's perfectly normal and expected for a corporation to maximize profits. The difference with insurance is that the profit comes at the expense of your well-being, and frankly, all the regulations in the world won't substantively change that. The best way to fight back is through exposure, a juxtaposition of the human luxury paid for by human misery.
So help us shine this spotlight. CIGNA's advertising tagline is 'A Business of Caring.' We think they ought to come up with something more appropriate for their actual practices. If you come up with one, post it on our Facebook page. Here are some examples. We'll send the best over to CIGNA. In addition, Jo Joshua Godfrey will join SEIU Healthcare 775NW outside the CIGNA corporate offices in Seattle, Washington today as they demand quality and affordable health care for every American as a fundamental right and not a privilege.
And send this video to your friends. Everyone needs to know what's at stake in health care reform. This kind of denial of coverage can happen to anyone under the current system.
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Bill O'Reilly is apparently really worried that we're going to become a "nanny state" if cancer screening procedures like mamograms and colonoscopies are forced upon the poor insurance companies.
O'Reilly: Now the president also stayed completely away from the feds dictating medical decisions.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: To my progressive friends, I would remind you that for decades the driving idea behind reform has been to end insurance company abuses and make coverage available for those without it. The public option, the public option is only a means to that end. We should remain open to other ideas that accomplish our ultimate goal.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
All right. So the public option, there it goes right out the window. And the government-mandated day-to-day care is not going to happen.
So the president was also very clear about the insurance companies. They are going to be forced to accept Americans who are ill and they can't boot you off the policy if you get sick. That's good. "Talking Points" likes that.
But the president goes further. He wants to order the insurance companies to cover certain procedures like mammograms and colonoscopies. Now we are getting into the nanny state stuff. If the feds have the power to run private health care industries, some of them are going to get out of the business, which is what the liberals want.
However, I like the idea of a national insurance marketplace where companies compete nationwide and offer lower premiums based upon more customers. I like that idea. But I'm not sure how it's going to work without the feds ordering the companies to do stuff.
Are you getting the picture here?
President Obama is correct in trying to downsize medical insurance premiums, and increased competition is the way to do that, not government meddling. There should be, however, federal oversight on health insurance companies. They must play fair or get fined big. But the rules must be crystal clear.
And finally it may be unconstitutional to force Americans to buy health care insurance, although Mr. Obama wants that and compares it to mandatory auto insurance. With auto insurance you have a machine that can do damage. It could be unconstitutional to force you to buy this stuff. But if Obamacare passes, you will be on somebody's policy. That is certain.
So people go out to town halls, they go to the community, and they’re like this. (SHAKES ARMS) It makes for great TV. You’ll probably make it tonight. Enjoy it.
First, there's the insanity of the head of the RNC criticizing anyone for disrupting a town hall meeting. Second, you have a woman whose mother died, ostensibly because of a lack of insurance, basically being insulted for daring to try to call attention to herself.
And this is not the only example. I can think of a dozen instances of Republican officials dismissing people trying to explain how the current system is broken. There was Tom Coburn telling the crying woman whose insurance refused to cover her husband that she should go to her neighbors for help. There was "Great White Hope" Republican Lynn Jenkins telling an uninsured constituent to be a grown-up and get insurance. The callousness on display at these things is palpable. And it could easily be turned into a powerful force for change.
That is, if there was one Democratic strategist interested in making a moral case anymore instead of a bunch of functionaries squandering a progressive agenda in favor of pleasing elites and talking about "bending the cost curve."
As previouslynoted, festival organizers all over the country have been having to replace the Beastie Boys, who cancelled their tour due to MCA having to undergo surgery for cancer.
Today, via Twitter, San Francisco's Outside Lands Festival announced that they were replacing the Beastie Boys with "the greatest band in the world": Tenacious D, the musical comedy duo featuring Superstar Jack Black and Kyle Gass.
We talked with my parents about all kinds of these issues in advance - but they also changed their mind about some things as they got closer to the end. My mother died peacefully in her sleep, exactly as she wanted.
My father, on the other hand, died of cancer in the hospital, talked out of the home hospice care he would have preferred by his "pro-life" activist physician. ("You don't want that, they're a little too free with the drugs." You know, because God forbid you die a few hours sooner.)
Two days before my father died, I literally had to push his doctor up against the wall and harangue him to get him to authorize the morphine he needed. And you know what this tin god did? He left an order for morphine pills "on request." (Dad could no longer swallow, and was in so much pain, he was in and out of consciousness.)
I found out the next morning and told the nurse to get him on the phone. The weenie had his associate call back instead, and he said he couldn't override the other doctor's instructions. "As long as I have you on the phone, I have another question," I said sweetly. "Dr. X also left instructions that my dad was to be resuscitated, and he told us he didn't want that. My mother says that's not her signature on the request, so it seems to me we have something of a legal problem here."
All of a sudden, he became quite helpful and offered to prescribe a morphine IV for my father.
Now, I'm a fighter, and I'm effective. But not everyone is, especially when a parent is dying. And some of those seniors have no family left to fight for them. So regular counseling about this would be a very, very good thing.
A campaign on conservative talk radio, fueled by President Obama's calls to control exorbitant medical bills, has sparked fear among senior citizens that the health-care bill moving through Congress will lead to end-of-life "rationing" and even "euthanasia."
The controversy stems from a proposal to pay physicians who counsel elderly or terminally ill patients about what medical interventions they would prefer near the end of life and how to prepare instructions such as living wills. Under the plan, Medicare would reimburse doctors for one session every five years to confer with a patient about his or her wishes and how to ensure those preferences are followed. The counseling sessions would be voluntary.
But on right-leaning radio programs, religious e-mail lists and Internet blogs, the proposal has been described as "guiding you in how to die," "an ORDER from the Government to end your life," promoting "death care" and, in the words of antiabortion leader Randall Terry, an attempt to "kill Granny."
Though the counseling provision is a tiny part of a behemoth bill, the skirmish over end-of-life care, like arguments about abortion coverage, has become a distraction and provided an opening for opponents of the president's broader health-care agenda. At a forum sponsored by the seniors group AARP that was intended to pitch comprehensive reform, Obama was asked about the "rumors." He used the question to promote living wills, noting that he and the first lady have them.
Democratic strategists privately acknowledged that they were hesitant to give extra attention to the issue by refuting the inaccuracies, but they worry that it will further agitate already-skeptical seniors.
The 2nd annual All Points West festival kicked off today in Jersey City, NJ. The 3 day concert is aiming to become the East's answer to Goldenvoice's other creation, Coachella. Originally slotted for tonight's headliner was the Beastie Boys, who were replaced by Jay-Z after the Beasties canceled their tour due to Adam Yauch aka MCA undergoing surgery for cancer.
Tool headlines tomorrow night, with Coldplay closing out the festival on Sunday.
In very unfortunate news revealed yesterday, MCA, nee Adam Yauch, of the Beastie Boys has cancer in his parotid gland and will begin undergoing treatment next week. Yauch, with longtime bandmate Ad Rock at his side, made the announcement candidly and fearlessly via video.
Enjoy this performance of "Rhymin' and Stealin'" from 1987 and go leave MCA a get well comment on the Beastie Boys Facebook Page.
Wichita, KS is home to the greatest rock and roll dive bar in the whole country, and Split Lip Rayfield, America's finest alt-bluegrass band. The band suffered a brutal blow in 2007 when founding guitarist Kirk Rundstrom in 2007 succumbed to esophageal cancer. This was one of his final performances.
Every Monday night, C&L's Late Nite Music Club will feature an act from every state, alphabetically by state, as part of LNMC's 50 State Strategy. Know a band or artist that you think is the best in their state? Email suggestions to latenitemusicclub [at] gmail.com. Next week: Kentucky. Will we get bluegrass two weeks in a row?
Why is it so difficult for the Villagers to allow the natural process of investigation to take place so we can get to the truth about how the Bush Administration used torture? Peter King uses the usual conservative talking point that says we hate America if we want to find the root cause for this moral cancer in the beltway. King attacks the ACLU as America-haters when all they are doing is righting a terrible wrong that was let loose by Bush and Cheney.
Hey, I robbed a store, pistol-whipped the cashier and abused a female customer. As a few years have gone by since then, I realize now that I shouldn't do that anymore. Do you think the police, the store, cashier or woman will just let bygones be bygones? Would Peter King?
What does is it say about John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin when David freaking Brooks of all people is saying this kind of stuff about her? Wow.
[Sarah Palin] represents a fatal cancer to the Republican party. When I first started in journalism, I worked at the National Review for Bill Buckley. And Buckley famously said he'd rather be ruled by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty. But he didn't think those were the only two options. He thought it was important to have people on the conservative side who celebrated ideas, who celebrated learning. And his whole life was based on that, and that was also true for a lot of the other conservatives in the Reagan era. Reagan had an immense faith in the power of ideas. But there has been a counter, more populist tradition, which is not only to scorn liberal ideas but to scorn ideas entirely. And I'm afraid that Sarah Palin has those prejudices. I think President Bush has those prejudices.
