Bad Deeds for 9-27-2009

 

Insurance Company Tries to Get Its Customers to Oppose Health Care Reform – Humana, one of the largest providers of Medicare Advantage plans, sent letters to beneficiaries in Michigan, Florida and other states urging them to contact lawmakers to register their opposition to proposed cuts. Maybe they should spend less on these letters and more on health care.

 

‘Death Panels’ Author Worked With Big Tobacco to Scuttle Health Reform – The person credited with inventing the “death panels” claim about health care reform worked with tobacco giant Phillip Morris to railroad health care reform in the Clinton administration, Rolling Stone magazine reports.

An article in the magazine’s October 1 issue reveals that Phillip Morris “worked off-the-record with … writer Betsy McCaughey as part of the input to the three-part expose in The New Republic on what the Clinton plan means,” Rolling Stone reports.

McCaughey, a conservative columnist and former deputy governor of New York, penned a 1994 article in The New Republic that was credited with helping to kill the Clinton-era health reforms. As RS noted, the magazine later retracted the story. And The Atlantic magazine ran a story in 1995, entitled “A Triumph of Misinformation,” debunking McCaughey’s arguments at TNR.

 

Remember Those Zits You Had When You Were 15? No Health Insurance for You! – A proposal to make preexisting health conditions irrelevant in the sale of insurance policies could help not just the seriously ill but also people who might consider themselves healthy, documents released Friday by a California-based advocacy group illustrate.

Health insurers have issued guidelines saying they could deny coverage to people suffering from such conditions as acne, hemorrhoids and bunions. One big insurer refused to issue individual policies to police officers and firefighters, along with people in other hazardous occupations. Some treated pregnancy or the intention to adopt as a reason for rejection.

 

Man Arrested For Asking Anthem Blue Cross/Shield About His Rate Increase – Joe Szakos leads the Virginia Organizing Project, an almost fifteen year-old community organization that Health Care for America Now works within Virginia to organize for health care reform. Szakos’s organization employs dozens of people, and they get their health care through Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield.

This year, Szakos was informed that Anthem was going to increase the premiums on Virginia Organizing Project’s health plan by 14.1%. Around the same time, the Virginia Organizing Project received an email from Anthem:

We strongly support reform that builds a strong, sustainable private-sector health care system – and strongly oppose creating a government-run health plan. We are urging our elected officials in Washington to take bipartisan action that will accomplish that. We are educating policymakers in Washington and working with our trade associations to encourage Congress to build on the current system and not disrupt the quality, affordable coverage on which our members depend….

As our elected officials debate health care, they need to hear directly from you.

Szakos immediately had some questions for Anthem. Chief among them, why is Anthem using its resources to lobby against health care reform with a public health insurance option while at the same time increasing rates by 14.1%?

Szakos, along with three other Virginia Organizing Project board members, went down to Anthem’s offices in Richmond, VA to ask. He left in handcuffs. Szakos, a customer, couldn’t get an answer from Anthem. There was no justification for raising rates on one hand, and spending money lobbying against health care reform on the other. And instead of trying to offer Szakos an explanation, they had him arrested.

As Szakos said in the video, this is about greed and force. There is no good explanation for these rate increases, and there is no justification for Anthem to spend money it collects in premiums from customers suffering under its “health care” plans on lobbying against reform that would help these very same people. The only thing motivating Anthem – and all insurance companies – is greed. And they get and keep their money by force.
Watch the video at the link.

 

Republican Mailer Infers Numerous Untruths – Senate Republicans are mailing out a “survey” insinuating that the president’s health care reform agenda includes various items that are not being considered. Written under the vague, non-partisan-sounding, but misleading title of “U.S. Senate Health Care Task Force,” the mailing, which includes a fundraising letter, was actually commissioned by the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Some examples of misleading questions:

Are you concerned that health care rationing could lead to:
23. Denial of treatment in cases where the patient’s prospects are deemed not good?
24. A “lottery” system of determining who will get priority treatment?
25. A “quota” system which would determine who would determine who would get treatment on the basis of race or age?

 

Fox News Producer Caught Rallying 9/12 Protest Crowd In Behind-The-Scenes Video – A Fox News Channel producer has been caught in a behind-the-scenes video rallying the crowd during last weekend’s 9/12 protest in Washington.

The Huffington Post has confirmed that the woman in the below video — seen raising her arms to rally the crowd behind Griff Jenkins, who was reporting from the scene for Fox News — is Fox News producer Heidi Noonan. The video shows the producer on her cell phone as she urges the crowd behind Jenkins to cheer louder. An “I’m A Foxaholic” poster appears nearby.

Fox News Lied About 9/12 Coverage, and CNN Calls Them Out For It – When Fox News ran a full-page ad in the Washington Post — as well as in two newspapers owned by Fox’s parent company — claiming that it had been the only network to cover the 9.12 tea party rally in Washington, DC, it was more than one CNN anchor was willing to take.

“I usually don’t suffer fools gladly,” CNN’s Rick Sanchez began. “Especially when it comes to the fools who perpetuate falsehoods. Well, today thousands of you flipped through the pages of the Washington Post, only to come up a lie so bold and so upsetting that frankly I’m just not going to sit here in silence and allow my craft or my news operation to be unfairly maligned.”

Over a large photo of the rally, the ad asks, “How Did ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC and CNN Miss This Story?”

“Enough is enough,” Sanchez went on, sounding as though he had been taking lessons in righteous indignation from Keith Olbermann. “And yes, I’m talking to you, Fox News. You, who claim to be fair and balanced. At what, I wonder? … They are saying we did not cover this story. They are using a lie to try and divide people into camps. … That’s an offense to myself and my colleagues, who risked their lives in Iran and Afghanistan and around the world to bring the news.”
Watch the video at the link.

Regards,

Jim