RN to RN: A Conversation of Gobal Concern March 29, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in Health.Tags: aisha jahangir, california health, California Nurses Association, canada health, cna, eileen prendiville, health worker's union, health workers, healthcare, healthcare funding, national health service, nhs, northern ireland health, nursing, ontario health, ontario nurses association, patient care, patient ratios, patricia campbell, private health insurance, quality care, registered nurses, rns, roger hollander, single payer, unions
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People First! International Health Workers for People Over Profit (IHWPOP); March 29, 2009
Eileen Prendiville (RN – San Francisco, USA)
I’m struck by how similar our concerns are, even though we care for different kinds of patients in three different countries with different health-care systems. We are all facing budget cuts that are making it more difficult to care for our patients.
Aisha Jahangir (RN – Ontario, Canada)
Hospitals across the province of Ontario are chronically under-funded, and they are cutting nursing positions to balance their budgets. Every RN position lost is equivalent to 1,950 fewer hours of nursing care per year.
We are very concerned about this, because a higher proportion of RNs in a hospital has been shown to reduce patient deaths. For every ten percent rise in the proportion of RNs, patient deaths drop by five percent. Every patient added to the workload of an average RN causes the rate of complications and deaths to increase by seven percent.
Patricia Campbell (RN – Belfast, Northern Ireland)
I want to express my admiration for the work of the California Nurses Association (CNA) for winning legislation to ensure a minimum ratio of nurses per patient. That’s got to make it easier to practice safely and provide quality care for patients.
Our National Health Service (NHS) prefers to blame frontline workers than provide them with more resources. I’m eager to learn how the CNA achieved this benefit.
Eileen
Australian nurses won the first RN to Patient Ratios in 2001.
After a 12-year battle involving numerous rallies at the Capitol in Sacramento and meeting with legislators while facing fierce opposition from the hospital industry, the California Nurses Association (CNA) won the first RN to Patient ratios in the United States in 2004.
We won ratios of 1 nurse for every 4 patients in the ER – 1 to 2 for ICU patients and 1 to 1 for trauma patients. The ratios apply at all times, including meals and breaks. We also won restrictions on the use of unlicensed staff, restrictions on unsafe “floating” of nursing staff and no cuts to ancillary staff as a result of ratios. You can find out more by visiting the CNA website.
Aisha
We have a long way to go. In our ER, RNs have worked 24-hour shifts and been responsible for 15 patients at a time! Nurses are being forced to care for patients in hallways, and they are burning out.
Our local newspaper carried a front-page story about the deterioration in patient care at the hospital where I work. The hospital recently closed 16 beds and laid off 30 staff. The loss of beds and nurses means that patients are waiting much too long for care, and there aren’t enough nurses to provide the care that’s needed.
Too much work and too much stress are driving people out of nursing. More than one in four of the RNs currently working in Ontario are over age 55. Who will replace them?
Eileen
In California hospitals, safe RN ratios have improved the quality of care as well as nurse recruitment and retention.
Unfortunately, the California Department of Health Services, the government agency that regulates healthcare facilities and should be enforcing the law, is understaffed and beholden to the Schwarzenegger administration. As hospital administrators constantly seek ways to cut budgets in order to increase profits, we nurses must be diligent and insist on enforcing the law in our workplaces.
Also, California law states that the ratios must be reviewed after five years – in 2009. The hospital industry recently released two studies questioning whether the ratios really work, so we know that another is battle brewing to undermine the ratios again.
Patricia
I work as a Community Psychiatric Nurse, and CPNs are very concerned about the number of patients under our care. Can you tell me about community nursing in California? Does the nurse-to-patient ratio legislation protect nurses and patients in the community?
Eileen
I’m sorry to say that the law mandating nurse-to-patient ratios in California applies only to RNs in acute-care hospitals.
When patients with complex medical issues are sent home or to post-acute or skilled nursing facilities, the number of RNs is much lower. However, in the non-acute-care setting, we have gained improvements in nurse-to-patient ratios using our union-mandated staff nurse committees. Home health or visiting nurses who are unionized can also negotiate decreased case loads.
Patricia
We don’t have a strong union leadership here in Northern Ireland, and this is reflected in the way our health service is being run down. I’ve been involved in forming a new union for health workers, because the existing unions are more interested in developing a relationship with management than in protecting the rights of patients and health workers.
Eileen
While you mentioned the cuts to the NHS, the idea that all patients can access health care is something that Americans want, but don’t have. As more people lose their jobs and their health insurance benefits, we’re going to see many more people with no access to healthcare.
How has the NHS changed since its original inception, and would the residents of the U.K and Canada ever give up the idea of national healthcare?
Aisha
After winning national medicare in the 1970s, Canadians never imagined that we would see such a severe and escalating deterioration in our health-care system. We have been fighting back, but we have to fight much harder.
Patricia
NHS has changed significantly since its inception. Privatisation has taken a stronger hold since the Thatcher years, and New Labour continued Thatcher’s policies, dismantling a health service that was once the envy of the world.
The idea that all patients would not have access to health care would be beyond comprehension for us. However, while all NHS patients have health care in principle, the waiting lists for essential procedures and life-saving operations are increasing. As a result, many people are forced to go private.
Mental health services in Northern Ireland are grossly underfunded. For example, young people requiring specialist treatment for eating disorders and personality disorders must go to England for treatment. They are effectively exiled from their own country, far away from their families and friends. So health care is not really available for all.
I cautioned US health-care campaigners at a recent Labor Notes conference. I told them if you are going to fight for health care, fight for quality health care. A half-baked health-care system isn’t good enough.
Aisha
In Canada, the reintroduction of for-profit competitive bidding is putting a downward pressure on wages, making it even more difficult to keep people in nursing.
Eileen
I think we are headed for a public health disaster if we don’t get the profit factor out of healthcare.
The demand for a single-payer healthcare system is growing in The United States. For-profit insurance companies shouldn’t be involved in our healthcare decisions and any healthcare reform that keeps them in the mix will surely fail.
Patricia
We need to build stronger unions so we can improve our working conditions and make sure that our patients get the quality care they deserve.
Aisha
All these cuts on the backs of patients have to stop. Only in solidarity can we win this tough battle. 
Aisha Jahangir is an RN in the Family Birthing Unit at the Guelph General Hospital in Ontario, Canada. She is also a local coordinator for the Ontario Nurses Association.
Eileen Prendiville is an RN at an acute-care hospital in San Francisco, USA. She is also on the bargaining team of the California Nurses Association.
Patricia Campbell is an RN and Community Psychiatric Nurse in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She is also a founder of the UNIVERSI health workers’ union.
RNs from Six States Rally for Single Payer Outside White House Healthcare Forum in Vermont March 18, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in Health.Tags: California Nurses Association, donna smith, health, health care, health care reform, health care system, health insurance, healthcare, healthcare reform, healthcare system, hr676, national health care act, National Health Program, nurses, president obama, private health insurance, progressive democrats, roger hollander, single payer
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Published on Wednesday, March 18, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
BURLINGTON, VT - The White House may have hoped for a carefully structured discussion with a predictable and prescribed outcome that would fit smoothly into its desired agenda, but during the second regional forum on healthcare reform, the White House heard once again that other options are not only available but are also strongly supported by many Americans. Nurses from Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and New Hampshire joined doctors, patients, faith and community-based leaders, healthcare reform activists and students to rally in support of single payer health reform outside the White House regional healthcare forum held in Burlington, VT, yesterday.
As the invited speakers and guests entered the Davis Student Center of the University of Vermont, more than 400 people gathered on the lawn outside to call on President Obama and other national leaders to include single payer reform in the plans seriously considered as the options to rebuild the nation’s broken healthcare system.
The Maine State Nurses Association, the Massachusetts Nurses Association and the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association all had RN leaders and members speaking to rally attendees and members of the press about what they see every day as they fight to advocate for patients struggling to get needed care while many either have no health coverage at all or are not adequately covered.
“We don’t need more insurance, we need healthcare for all,” said RN Tammy Farwell of Maine as protestors chanted, “Everybody in, nobody out,” over and over again to send a resounding message to the forum participants inside the building. Some of the nurses were able to go inside and listen to the forum as in began, but others were only able to sit in an overflow ballroom where the forum discussion was being shown on a large movie screen.
But outside the energy in support of a publicly funded, privately delivered healthcare system was punctuated with cheers and chants. Every time one of the speakers said, “healthcare is a basic human right,” the crowd erupted in support of the statement that also was made by then candidate Barack Obama during the fall Presidential debates. Many of the protestors expressed their anger that President Obama has not given as much attention to the single payer plan, as crafted in HR676, “The National Health Care Act,” as they believe he has done with the hybrid plans that allow for-profit, private insurance plans to stay prominently in the picture.
Unless and until the Obama administration gives serious attention and consideration to single payer reform, many of the protestors said they expect similar or even larger actions as forums convene in Iowa, North Carolina and California. Many of the member groups of the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care had a presence at the rally, including Physicians for a National Health Program, Progressive Democrats of America, and HealthCare-Now.
WE are the Union February 12, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in California, Health.Tags: andy stern, California Nurses Association, cna, eileen prendiville, health, health care, healthcare, roger hollander, sal roselli, seiu, uhw, union democracy, unions, united healthcare workers
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by Eileen Prendiville – USA
“People First,” International Health Workers for People Over Profit (IHWPOP), February 12, 2009
http://hosted.verticalresponse.com/301992/d9dc259f54/1304001583/2e64d22247/
On January 27, the Service Employees International (SEIU), headed by Andy Stern, put its United Healthcare Workers-West local (UHW) into trusteeship. This means that the local’s assets are seized, its constitution and bylaws are suspended, its elected officers are removed, and Stern-appointed ‘trustees’ replace the local’s elected leadership.
The hostile takeover followed UHWs refusal to comply with SEIU’s order to split the 150,000-member local in two. UHW refused on the basis that its members had a right to vote on the matter.
Over the past few years, SEIU and the UHW have locked horns over healthcare reform, internal union democracy, how to organize non-union workers and the consolidation of smaller locals into mega-locals.
Sal Roselli, head of UHW, has been a vocal critic of Stern’s top-down, anti-democratic leadership style, while Stern has accused UHW of being in collusion with the California Nurses Association (CNA), one of SEIU’s most vocal critics.
While the SEIU leadership preaches unity with UHW, it is trying to divide and conquer CNA.
The same day UHW was placed under trusteeship, nurses represented by CNA were contacted by SEIU staff using a front group – RNs for Change. It seems that SEIU is trying to undermine upcoming CNA elections for Board of Directors and delegates to our fall convention.
CNA has long been at odds with Andy Stern and his appointees over his leadership style and his cozy relationship with management. His willingness to cut deals with employers to secure contracts has hurt health workers and patients.
In California, SEIU backed legislation that would bar the union from reporting healthcare code violations in nursing homes and make it more difficult for patients to sue nursing homes for abuse and neglect. In other states, SEIU joined the hospital industry to lobby against laws mandating minimum nurse-to-patient staffing ratios.
New Union – New Hope?
Refusing to roll over and die, UHW has formed a breakaway union, the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) and plans to disaffiliate from SEIU – a long and difficult process.
At the hospital where I work, contracts for UHW members as well as CNA nurses are currently open for renegotiation.
As the newly-formed NUHW begins organizing, SEIU staff sent in by Andy Stern, are already meeting with employers. They will likely push for quick contract settlements, but UHW members, at least at my facility, are organized and informed and will likely vote to decertify SEIU. However, with the current economic uncertainty the average worker may be unwilling to strike.
Reactions to the split inside SEIU are mixed. Some see only the destruction of unions and the glee of employers who will move to take full advantage of the situation. At one hospital a negotiator from management said, “Why would we negotiate with you [UHW] when we could negotiate with Andy Stern?” There is also the fear that a weakened labor movement will undermine passage of the Employee Free Choice Act.
Others are more hopeful. It is inspiring to see thousands of rank-and-file workers fighting to defend their union. Chanting “WE are the union! The mighty, mighty union!” they remind us that the power of unions lies in the collective strength of the workers. This message is sorely needed by a labor movement reeling from years of defeat.
Their Fight is Our Fight – Support NUHW!
SEIU is spending millions of dollars on its campaign to squelch the new union. Because UHW’s assets were seized, NUHW staff are working long hours without pay or benefits. They urgently need our financial support.
Please donate online or mail your check to:
The Fund For Union Democracy
465 California Street, Ste. 1600
San Francisco, California 94104
Video – Rank-and-file UHW members explain why they want to keep control of their union
Eileen Prendiville works as an RN and is on the CNA bargaining team at an acute care hospital in San Francisco.
Three Reasons Why Single-Payer Health Care Has Become Possible January 31, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in Health.Tags: affordable health care, California Nurses Association, comprehensive health care, comprehensive reform, congress, david swanson, democrats, Economic Stimulus, H.R. 676, health, health care, health insurance, healthcare, Healthcare Not Warfare, insurance companies, James Clyburn, multiple-payer, National Health Program, republicans, roger hollander, single payer, steny hoyer, universal health cae
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David Swanson, www.alternet.org, January 31, 2009
For starters, Democratic leadership could persuade enough Democrats to vote to pass it without a single Republican, if they chose to.
While a Democratic polling firm has just found, as pollsters always do, dramatic public support for public health coverage, Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill appear divided, as they have always been, over whether to take a comprehensive approach to health care.
House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C., said on C-Span recently that incrementalism would suit him better “than to go out and just bite something you can’t chew.” Clyburn said he opposes any comprehensive approach in 2009. Meanwhile, on Thursday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., made a long speech about health care at a Washington conference in which he said, “I am committed to helping bring comprehensive reform to the floor of the 111th Congress.”
Now, on Capitol Hill, phrases like “comprehensive reform” and “universal health care” can mean almost anything, including proposals that would likely require comprehensive reform themselves by the time the ink was dry. But there is an opening right now for serious health care reform of the sort that has succeeded in almost every other wealthy country on earth: single payer. Here are three reasons why this is a moment in which single-payer health coverage (private medicine paid for by the government, and the elimination of all health insurance companies) has become possible.
First, the partisan dynamics have changed in Congress. While some Republicans might vote for single payer, they wouldn’t need to. The Democratic leadership could persuade enough Democrats to vote to pass it without a single Republican, if they chose to.
In the House, where the Democrats seriously worsened an economic stimulus bill this week in order to win irrelevant Republican votes and then didn’t get a single one, they might be in the mood to wake up and begin behaving as the majority they are. In the Senate, there is the ever-present scourge of the filibuster, which allows senators representing 11 percent of the public to block legislation, but the Democrats could change the rule to rid our republic of that anti-democratic blight if they choose to.
This will require placing a great deal of pressure on Democratic senators to persuade them that losing important battles in which they vote well but don’t play to win will hurt them as much as it hurts the Republicans who vote against the public will.
That’s where the second reason comes in. A massive, well-organized public movement has been built that is pressing right now for single payer. In the House of Representatives, the leading advocate is Congressman John Conyers, D-Mich., whose bill H.R. 676 had 93 cosponsors in the last Congress. Conyers provides a useful FAQ here, and Physicians for a National Health Program has provided a longer one on single payer.
Other advocates include: Labor for Single Payer, Healthcare Now, the California Nurses Association and the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care, which boasts dozens of major organizational members. Progressive Democrats of America has mobilized tremendous grassroots pressure through its Healthcare Not Warfare campaign. This is essentially a campaign for single-payer health coverage, but it also organizes the peace movement to participate and communicates an important selling point. The financial cost of creating a single payer-system would be a fraction of what we spend each year merely on the occupation of Iraq, which Congress and the president have committed to ending.
Compared to the cost of wasteful programs at the Pentagon or bailouts for bankers, or even the new economic stimulus bill, single payer is a bargain, doesn’t kill anyone, saves and improves lives, and even stimulates the economy better than most of the measures being used toward that end. The movement for single payer has organized a lot more than numbers; it has also marshaled persuasive arguments.
The third reason that this is the moment for single payer is that it is so obviously the best solution. When put into consideration with other proposals, single payer wins the debates hands down.
The alternative to single payer is multiple payer. That means massive waste and inefficiency, not what a new government ostentatiously looking for solutions that really work should settle on. It also means maintaining the only things in America less popular than Dick Cheney: health insurance companies, and funding them with public money as well as money directly from citizens. In a multiple-payer system, one of the payers is you If you can’t pay, you may be out of luck. If you can and do pay, you are often out of luck as well.
And the bureaucratic waste extends to your own life. You fill out forms for the privilege of paying through the nose for the privilege of being told you can’t be helped unless you get a second mortgage. Talking about “universal” systems that are “affordable” is all well and good, but they cannot actually exist as long as the for-profit health insurance companies are running the show.
How does this alternative sound for affordable: Go to whatever doctor you choose, and then go home with no bill and no paperwork? What if such a system could be paid for with taxes on businesses that amounted to less than what most of them currently pay for health care? What if the removal of the profit motive allowed a shift to preventive and truly comprehensive medicine?
This is not a dream. It’s far more possible right now than giving trillions of dollars to bankers would have seemed a year ago or polite debates over which torture techniques are acceptable would have seemed eight years ago.
Here’s what you can do:
Call Rep. James Clyburn, and ask him to whip his colleagues for H.R. 676: (202) 225-3315.
Call your own representative and ask him or her to co-sponsor and promote H.R. 676: (202) 224-3121.
You can also help by signing the Healthcare Not Warfare petition.
The Horror of Healthcare in America January 18, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in Health.Tags: california nurses, California Nurses Association, donna smith, health care, health insurance, healthcare, insurance giants, medical insurance, roger hollander, single payer, universal healthcare
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Published on Sunday, January 18, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
by Donna Smith
It was late Thursday evening after an especially difficult day. I sat at my computer screen as I often do late into the night processing my rage and my determination into some fashion of an essay to fight for healthcare for all in this great nation.
I was especially upset this night. It was a day when the abrupt reality of the difficult road ahead to earn equal access to care for all was especially stark for me. Powerful people can be dismissive of people like you and like me. And while they may listen when listening seems valuable within their agenda, real caring and real political courage are very rare indeed.
I reached over to the coffee table for a sip of the diet soda everyone tells me not to drink so much, and my hand froze. I tried to move it. No matter what I did, my hand stayed frozen in the grotesque grip with my thumb and my index finger wedged together and my other fingers dangling without form – my hand was paralyzed. My arm felt strangely distant. My brain could not force movement.
Within seconds as I stared helplessly at my right hand, I ran through the calculations – should I call my husband? What if this is the beginning of a stroke? If I stand to walk across the room, do my legs still work? Should I call 911? What if I need tests? What if I have to pay a co-pay? What is our bank balance and when do I next need to pay rent and the rest of the bills? What if I have to miss work, right now when missing work would not be OK at all? I don’t want to be a cause for raised insurance rates for my employer or my fellow employees – and I don’t want my bosses running calculations on my worth based on a paralyzed hand in the night. What if, what if, what if…
My husband and I have been through this battleground before, and we have been scarred by it forever but we learned. We learned it might be better to risk death than re-enter the fray. It’s a strange form of post traumatic stress at the hands of my healthcare system. Odd stuff.
I waited. After what seemed an endless few minutes, my hand just started to work again. All at once. I was so grateful. Not that my hand worked, mind you. I was grateful I had not started in motion the horror of the healthcare system in this nation for me and the inevitable bills that would have followed. I was grateful I cheated the cycle for now even if I will never know what caused that temporary paralysis. At least not until the next time, if there is one, and maybe not until it manifests in a very different way.
My decision in those 60 seconds was no different than what millions of Americans go through every single day. Some are lucky like me. The symptom subsides or the virus wanes and life goes on. But for thousands of others, the grim truth is they wait themselves right to death. And I have insurance just like so many of us do. Beyond the immediate concerns, I wait for check-ups, for cancer check-ups, for meds and for regular care by doing the same – though calmer – calculations.
The reality is we know having health insurance is not being protected in this nation. It is simply a hedge against being turned away at the door or labeled less worthy of the best care because our financial standing does not hold us in the best stead with our providers. Having health insurance doesn’t protect us from financial ruin or even from being denied a life-saving treatment. It is a business arrangement in which we are in a weakened and disadvantaged position.
Yet, some of our less courageous leaders would have us believe that forcing us all to buy more of this defective product that is health insurance will actually give us “universal healthcare.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Forcing us to buy for-profit health insurance simply forces us to build the profit margins for the insurance giants — and the campaign coffers for those political leaders who support them. It is that simple and that horrific… else I would not have sat waiting alone and frightened in the night with my hand paralyzed being willing to risk whatever the next few moments brought or even far worse.
My husband always reminds me that often the simplest answer is the best one. That the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. But doing what is simple is not always what is easy. In this case, the simple beauty of a publicly funded health system for this nation – everybody in and nobody out – is the simple and right move.
And what was I writing about when my hand froze? I was writing about the 2.6 million jobs that would be created by converting to single payer. I was celebrating the wonderful study released by the California Nurses Association telling the nation that doing the right thing in healthcare is also one great way to do the right thing for the nation’s economy. I wanted to tell the world that single payer – publicly funded, privately delivered healthcare – is not only politically feasible it is politically necessary.
I was helping to make the money argument that we seem to need so badly in this nation before we accept higher moral ground.
Our elected officials have a chance to be leaders or they can leave millions sitting alone in the dark doing the horrific calculations like I did. What is a life worth? We have to force ourselves to answer that question justly and humanely by passing single payer.
roger hollander 
Health Insurance Whistle-Blower Knows Where the Bodies Are Buried July 15, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in Health.Tags: amy godman, California Nurses Association, cigna, cna, denis moynihan, for profit health, health, health care, health care reform, health insurance, health insurance industry, health insurance lobby, health premiums, healthcare, healthcare reform, hmos, insurance exectuives, max baucus, pharmaceutical industry, roger hollander, senate finance, single payer, wendell potter, whistle blower
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Wendell Potter is the health insurance industry’s worst nightmare. He’s a whistle-blower. Potter, the former chief spokesperson for insurance giant CIGNA, recently testified before Congress, “I saw how they confuse their customers and dump the sick—all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors.”
Potter was deeply involved in CIGNA and industrywide strategies for maintaining their profitable grip on U.S. health care. He told me: “The thing they fear most is a single-payer plan. They fear even the public insurance option being proposed; they’ll pull out all the stops they can to defeat that to try to scare people into thinking that embracing a public health insurance option would lead down the slippery slope toward socialism … putting a government bureaucrat between you and your doctor. They’ve used those talking points for years, and they’ve always worked.”
In 2007, CIGNA denied a California teenager, Nataline Sarkisyan, coverage for a liver transplant. Her family went to the media. The California Nurses Association joined in. Under mounting pressure, CIGNA finally granted coverage for the procedure. But it was too late. Two hours later, Nataline died.
While visiting family in Tennessee, Potter stopped at a “medical expedition” in Wise, Va. People drove hours for free care from temporary clinics set up in animal stalls at the local fairground. Potter told me that weeks later, flying on a CIGNA corporate jet with the CEO: “I realized that someone’s premiums were helping me to travel that way … paying for my lunch on gold-trimmed china. I thought about those men and women I had seen in Wise County … not having any idea [how] insurance executives lived.” He decided he couldn’t be an industry PR hack anymore.
Insurance executives and their Wall Street investors are addicted to massive profits and double-digit annual rate increases. To squeeze more profit, Potter says, if a person makes a major claim for coverage, the insurer will often scrutinize the person’s original application, looking for any error that would allow it to cancel the policy. Likewise, if a small company’s employees make too many claims, the insurer, Potter says, “very likely will jack up the rates so much that your employer has no alternative but to leave you and your co-workers without insurance.”
This week, as the House and Senate introduce their health care bills, Potter warns, “One thing to remember is that the health insurance industry has been anticipating this debate on health care for many years … they’ve been positioning themselves to get very close to influential members of Congress in both parties.” Montana Sen. Max Baucus chairs the Senate Finance Committee, key for health care reform. Potter went on, “[T]he insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry and others in health care have donated … millions of dollars to his campaigns over the past few years. But aside from money, it’s relationships that count … the insurance industry has hired scores and scores of lobbyists, many of whom have worked for members of Congress, and some who are former members of Congress.”
The insurance industry and other health care interests are lobbying hard against a government-sponsored, nonprofit, public health insurance option, and are spending, according to The Washington Post, up to $1.4 million per day to sway Congress and public opinion.
Don’t be fooled. Profit-driven insurance claim denials actually kill people, and Wendell Potter knows where the bodies are buried. His whistle-blowing may be just what’s needed to dump what’s sick in our health care system.
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
© 2009 Amy Goodman