Our Cool New Web Ad

Pretty neat, huh? Go ahead and click on it. It takes you to an HCAN anti-insurance action page.


Add It Up

Kaiser just put up a new online calculator which shows how much help you’d get paying health insurance premiums in each of the health care reform bills before Congress.

Levi’s 411

When I heard about the Levi Johnston tell all in Vanity Fair earlier this month, I had no shame in admitting I wanted to read it. I was curious, but I was also really busy and never got around to buying the magazine.

Don’t ask me why I thought of it again this morning, but I did, and I’ve waited long enough that now the entire story is online.

It’s entertaining. Not at all surprising. But definitely entertaining.

Want To Hear A Joke?

C-SPAN‘s carrying Senate Finance opening remarks on the Baucus bill today, and the extensive Republican b.s. would be hysterical if it hadn’t already been accepted by a vulnerable, disillusioned electorate and much of the press as if it held some shred of truth. Annoying.

On a lighter note, MoveOn and Will Farrell have a new video out. It’s a little slow getting going, but once it does, there are some funny lines:


Signing the Blues

Billboard going up tomorrow in North Carolina, Arkansas, and Delaware:



On the Hill and In the Field

Hi all. Happy Monday. It’s obviously going to be another busy week in health care reform. Senate Finance committee members have filed more than 500 amendments to the Baucus bill, and you can read them all online here (though I don’t expect you will). I do expect to have a wrap up of some of the most ridiculous Republican proposals later today or tomorrow.

And if you are out and about tomorrow and you’ve got some pent up frustration at your health insurance company, join in one of the more than 150 events taking place outside insurance company headquarters and offices nationwide. MoveOn has the best searchable database online for scouting out a protest near you. Like the image above says, the events are all branded “Big Insurance: Sick of It.”

Friday Funny

In case you missed it, SNL explains exactly how it is Joe Wilson came to scream “You Lie” at President Obama. The opening skit’s the first 5 minutes, and it’s terrific (h/t Levana via HuffPo):

As an added bonus, if you click through and watch the clip on HuffPo, you can see our new online ad (also featured top left here) pop up on the top right hand side of the page.

Blank Chairs

Rep. Dennis Kucinich is heading up a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Subcommittee (h/t DF) hearing on the impact of private health insurance companies on patients’ medical care right now. He and Representative Conyers and Representative Kennedy are slaughtering private health insurance company executives. Conyers is particularly fantastic – and not just because he has cited Health Care for America Now and our reports on market consolidation, big insurance profits, and CEO compensation.

The private insurance executives are doing an excellent job of shrugging their shoulders and feigning ignorance. If you take their word (or lack of word) for it, they apparently know a whole lot of nothing about anything related health insurance reform.

Premium Insight

Even Fox agrees we should be listening to Wendell:

Potter, 58, has walked away from a fancy office in Philadelphia, fat perks and paychecks, comfy rides on corporate jets, and an easy path toward a secure retirement.

He should have never gone home to Tennessee to visit his mom and dad, who’d never made this kind of loot toiling in a factory.

Potter also should not have picked up the newspaper to read about a free health fair in rural Wise, Va. And, most of all, Potter should have not driven some 50 miles through winding Appalachian roads to the Wise County Fairgrounds.

Potter told me that to this day, he has no idea why he did this in July 2007. But somehow it took all the fun out of being a “well-paid huckster” for corporate health care.

“I was expecting the kind of health fair you might see at your local mall,” Potter said. “Instead, I saw hundreds of people standing in line in the rain… to be treated in animal stalls.”

Apparently, Wise County is thin on infrastructure. So some folks hosed down the stalls at the fairgrounds for the arrival of Remote Area Medical, a nonprofit originally formed to care for Indians in the Amazon rain forest.

Potter met throngs of uninsured, underinsured, and insured-but-can’t-afford-the-rising-deductible, who’d camped overnight.

“It was almost dehumanizing to stand in line like this,” Potter said, “to get treatment in places where just a few weeks ago people were bringing their prize goats and pigs.”

A couple weeks later, Potter was flying in a corporate jet. A flight attendant served him lunch on gold-rimmed china with a gold-plated fork and knife.

Now, at this point, some corporate PR hacks would complain that something wasn’t cooked properly. Potter, at least, should have thought: This sure beats hanging out in those pig stalls. But instead he thought this: “Someone’s insurance premiums were paying for me to travel in such luxury.”

The whole story is here.

Max Misses The Mark

Yes, the Baucus bill stinks. Here’s our official assessment:

The Baucus bill is a gift to the insurance industry that fails to meet the most basic promise of health care reform: a guarantee that Americans will have good health care that they can afford. The Baucus bill would give a government-subsidized monopoly to the private insurance industry to sell their most profitable plans – high-deductible insurance – without having to face competition from a public health insurer.

Under the Baucus bill, employers would have no responsibility to help pay for their workers’ coverage and would be given incentives to have workers pay more for barebones insurance. Americans who don’t get health benefits through work would still not be able to get good, affordable coverage.

We urge Senators on the Finance Committee to replace the Baucus plan with legislation that will do what the Senate HELP Committee and three House committees have done: guarantee that Americans have good health insurance that they can afford with the choice of a strong national public health insurance option.

In other reform-related news, the image up top is the second ad in our new print campaign.