Category: Health Insurance

Health Insurance Posted on

CEO Richard Master Masterminds Full Medicare for All

Just when the prospects for single-payer or full Medicare for everyone, with free choice of doctors and hospitals, appear to be going nowhere, from Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley comes a stirring that could go national and make single-payer a reality. Throwing down the gauntlet on the grounds of efficiency and humanness, businessman Richard Master, CEO of MCS Industries Inc., the nation’s leading supplier of wall and poster frames, is bent on arousing the nation’s business leaders to back single-payer – the efficient full Medicare for all – solution. The woefully wasteful and profiteering health care industries have blocked majority opinion, and a majority of physicians and nurses, to keep the present sky-high costly system in place, that receives huge taxpayer subsidies without any reasonable, and meaningful, […] Read More

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Medicare’s victims

Last month marked fifty years since Congress created the Medicare program.  Medicare is often pointed to as proof that yes, Virginia, government can run a health care program that provides quality care to its beneficiaries. Even many of those who argue the program needs massive changes in order to avoid bankruptcy agree that the Medicare model is an effective way of guaranteeing health care to America’s seniors. But does Medicare really provide effective and  compassionate care? Dr. David Hogberg’s, health care policy annalist for the National Center for Public Policy Research, new book, Medicare’s Victims: How the U.S. Government’s Largest Health Care Program Harms Patients and Impairs Physicians answers this question. In case the title does not give it away, the answer is NO. Dr. Hogberg […] Read More

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Why Medicare-For-All Makes More Sense Now Than Ever

Private health insurance drives up costs for everyone. Medicare — signed into law fifty years ago, on July 30, 1965 — was supposed to be just the first step. For the fifty years before Medicare’s enactment, progressives had fought unsuccessfully for universal, government-provided health insurance. In 1912, President Theodore Roosevelt’s Progressive Party platform advocated universal, government-sponsored, health insurance, but he was defeated in his quest for another term as president. In 1917, the California legislature approved universal health insurance, and the governor supported it, but a 1918 ballot resolution defeated the measure after a massive, well-financed business and physician-fueled campaign against it. President Franklin Roosevelt seriously considered including national health insurance in his 1935 Social Security legislation, but decided against it out of fear that […] Read More

Obama Care Posted on

How Obamacare Is Actually Preventing Americans From Escaping Poverty

Obamacare is leaving the middle class behind. Not the living-in-suburbia, driving-an-SUV-to-soccer-practice middle-class dream (although it affects people living that dream negatively, too), but the new middle class of America—the ones struggling to pull themselves out of the hole after the economic crash. The middle class that is so close to poverty that one wrong move will land them there, but just far enough away from hopeless debt that the states and the federal government figure they can fend for themselves. Which many of them probably could have, before the Affordable Care Act. This is not because Obamacare is a bad idea. It’s because it is not being allowed to function correctly in its attempt to extend affordable health care coverage to more Americans. Do a […] Read More

Obama Care Posted on

New Website Born of Healthcare Law Discloses Billions of Dollars Paid to Doctors and Hospitals by Drug and Device Firms

Thanks to Obamacare and the development of a new websitedisclosing payments to physicians and teaching hospitals, it’s now known that billions of dollars has been exchanged between medical practitioners and industry in just a few months. For example, from August to December 2013, pharmaceutical manufacturers and device companies issued 4.4 million payments to more than 500,000 health care professionals and teaching hospitals that totaled $3.5 billion, The New York Times reported. This total included $380 million in speaking and consulting monies that drug and device businesses gave to doctors. The website, established as part of the Affordable Care Act, tracks all gifts valued at more than $10 given by manufacturers of drugs, medical devices and medical supplies that have at least one product covered by […] Read More

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Thank You Obamacare – California Health Insurance Costs Spike Up To 88% In 2014

If you like your disposable income… forget it. Health-care insurance premiums for individuals in California rose between 22% and 88% in 2014 from last year, even after the federal health-care overhaul. This has led, as Bloomberg reports, to Proposition 45 – a bill that would grant regulatory say on proposed premium increases. “Unless Proposition 45 is passed we are going to continue to see dramatic year-over-year increases,” warned Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones. As Bloomberg reports, Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones said, a Democrat, is pushing a statewide ballot measure for November known as Proposition 45 that would give him regulatory say on proposed premium increases. The measure is opposed by insurance companies, which have said that it would actually cause rates to rise while harming the […] Read More

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2013: Obama’s Healthcare Fix

By Stephen Lendman Steve Lendman Blog He’s got himself to blame. He sold a pig in a polk. He backed one of America’s greatest ever scams. It hugely enriches providers. It does so at the expense of giving everyone universal single payer coverage. More on that below. Obamacare is rife with problems. It leaves millions uninsured. It leaves millions more underinsured. It makes healthcare coverage more expensive. Mandated market rules include rude awakenings. Many consumers are left paying much more than they thought. Most plans include huge deductibles and co-pays. Doing so means tens of millions face unaffordable out-of-pocket costs. Federal subsidies for America’s poor are woefully inadequate. Millions live from paycheck to paycheck. Limited resources make expensive treatments unaffordable. Insurers have plenty of wiggle room. They can’t […] Read More

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CBS: More Than Two Million Americans Being Dropped From Their Health Insurance Plans

Source: Washington Free Beacon CBS This Morning reported Tuesday more than two million Americans will not be able to renew their current health insurance policies because of Obamacare. That is said to be more than triple the number of people buying insurance under the Affordable Care Act. Correspondent Jan Crawford called the number “just the tip of the iceberg … despite the president’s assurances to the contrary,” referring to Obama’s infamous pledge that people who like their plan will be able to keep it under Obamacare. Those numbers are certain to go even higher, Crawford said, with some companies telling CBS they have sent letters but not disclosing how many. Industry experts like Larry Levitt of the Kaiser Family Foundation said the insurance companies have no […] Read More

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Consumers Abandoning Healthcare.gov

By Stephen Lendman   Steve Lendman Blog Can you blame them? According to Digital Trends (DT), “more than $500 million” was spent creating “the digital equivalent of a rock.” DT’s source is the General Accounting Office (GAO). Most spending went for contracts, saying: “CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) data indicated that the agency spent almost $394 million from fiscal year 2010 through March 31, 2013, through contracts to complete activities to establish the FFEs and the data hub and carry out certain other exchange-related activities.” FFE’s are federally administrative exchanges. They include Healthcare.gov and Washington run state exchanges. Other costs went for salaries and administrative expense. CGI Federal is Healthcare.gov’s lead contractor. It got $93.7 million for failure. It’s done lots of previous […] Read More

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2013: Billionaire Koch Brothers Spending Millions To Deny Health Coverage To Low-Income Americans

These billionaire industrialists are pressuring states to deny health coverage to the people who need it most. Conservative advocates funded by the billionaire industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch have launched a massive campaign pressuring states to deny health care coverage to lower income Americans through the Medicaid expansion contained in the Affordable Care Act. The effort, orchestrated by the group Americans for Prosperity, is targeting lawmakers in Virginia tasked with deciding whether the state should accept federal dollars to provide insurance to individuals and families below 133 percent of the federal poverty line ($31,321 in income for a family of four). Volunteers with the organization are distributing flyers through door-to-door canvassing, attending committee hearings, and according to one lawmakers who has become a target of the campaign, intimidating […] Read More