From The California Nurses Association:
California’s Real Death Panels: Insurers Deny 21% of Claims
PacifiCare’s Denials 40%, Cigna’s 33% in First Half of 2009
More than one of every five requests for medical claims for insured patients, even when recommended by a patient’s physician, are rejected by California’s largest private insurers, amounting to very real death panels in practice daily in the nation’s biggest state, according to data released Wednesday by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee.
CNA/NNOC researchers analyzed data reported by the insurers to the California Department of Managed Care. From 2002 through June 30, 2009, six of the largest insurers operating in California rejected 47.7 million claims for care — 22 percent of all claims…
Read the rest there.
Something to be said for the crew at Masada (73 C.E.).
If these wrongs galvanize the people, maybe we walk away from the insured lifestyle notion and grasp the instant passage of such a health care will.
Under our current version of a “free market”, the collective still wields the scepter.
I don’t buy their “product”.
Is there any ball harder then that?
Yeah, nonnie…
Nearly 7x as many people die per year for lack of health care than died on 9/11.
Doesn’t take much imagination to wonder what would happen to a government that would let that happen on their watch.
But there it is. Obama seems content to tilt at bipartisan windmills, and if preliminary reports are true, willing to ditch his progressive base in the process.
Seems that he has placed the country’s health in the hands of one Olympia Snowe. I suggest that a courageous senator who is otherwise supportive of health care reform nullify her importance by stepping up and saying he will vote against a bill that doesn’t have a robust public option.
It’s time for some g-damn hardball.
people should stand in the halls of congress holding pictures of people who are dead or dying because an insurance company decided they don’t deserve treatment. any politician that votes against a public safety net (that’s what they should call it instead of public or govt option) has blood on his/her hands.