Things to keep you up nights...
I was going to post this on Saturday, but then I thought "nobody reads LJ on the weekends" so I waited to post about this until Monday, because I feel that this is too important to get overlooked by a weekend posting.
The full article on this can be found over at Daily Kos but I'll just provide a quick summary here anyway.
The video below has to do with a little thing called "rescission." "Rescission" is the insurance companies' practice of finding a way to cancel the coverage of people who come down with high cost illnesses like cancer. Y'know, dumping the people who need them the most, right at the worst possible time of their lives often when they or their children are fighting for their lives.
Apparently insurance companies even give their people bonuses if they can figure out legal or quasi-legal (or even illegal, but don't get caught) ways to do this to people.
If they get caught doing it, they get fined, but so far the cost of the fines has clearly been outweighed by the benefits to doing business this way. Health insurance in this country is an industry and it's run by corporations with shareholders who are in it to win it. They're not operated as part of a public trust or to promote the welfare of the people or for the common good. They're operated to garner profits and at the intersection of "Doing the right thing" and "Making a profit" you and I both know which way corporations choose to turn.
In this video, the chair of the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations asks the CEO's of three big insurance companies if each of them would at least commit to stopping their practice of recission except in cases where the company could show "intentional fraud." In other words, stopping the practice of dumping people overboard unless they were actually trying to screw the company over. No longer shafting really sick good people who had entered into their contract with their health insurance companies in good faith.
The answer from all three executives?
C'mon, you know the answer to this!
NO.
No.
NO.
In other words:
"Dear American People,
Fuck off and die.
No Love,
Your Friendly Neighborhood Health Insurance Corporate Overlords"
The big middle finger extension from the insurance overlords come in around 4:47 in the video, but the whole video is worth watching to get a good "feel" for what these pukesacks try to do the minute you or someone you love comes down with a serious illness.
THIS is why we need to have a public option for health care and why we need health care reform. If you think that it can't or won't affect you that these people are the ones who are going to be deciding whether you get to live or die based on whether or not they can shaft you when you're at your most vulnerable? You're either blissfully delusional or you've been extremely lucky... so far.
Health care reform is under attack currently, by GUESS WHO? The insurance lobbies who like things the way they are and want to reserve the right to throw you under the bus whenever and however they see fit. I, for one, am sick to death of being shat on by corporate types and I'm mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore.
If you're as pissed off and frankly...scared shitless...as I am after seeing this, you can hop over to Health Care For America Now and sign up to keep involved and call or write your Congress Critters to let them know that we want health care reform NOW. NOW NOW NOW.
This cannot wait. We cannot wait. While we wait, they continue business as usual and people die because of it. I, for one, am not waiting around until they're pulling this crap on me or someone I love.
Big thanks to popebuck1 for pointing this one out in his post on Friday.
The full article on this can be found over at Daily Kos but I'll just provide a quick summary here anyway.
The video below has to do with a little thing called "rescission." "Rescission" is the insurance companies' practice of finding a way to cancel the coverage of people who come down with high cost illnesses like cancer. Y'know, dumping the people who need them the most, right at the worst possible time of their lives often when they or their children are fighting for their lives.
Apparently insurance companies even give their people bonuses if they can figure out legal or quasi-legal (or even illegal, but don't get caught) ways to do this to people.
If they get caught doing it, they get fined, but so far the cost of the fines has clearly been outweighed by the benefits to doing business this way. Health insurance in this country is an industry and it's run by corporations with shareholders who are in it to win it. They're not operated as part of a public trust or to promote the welfare of the people or for the common good. They're operated to garner profits and at the intersection of "Doing the right thing" and "Making a profit" you and I both know which way corporations choose to turn.
In this video, the chair of the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations asks the CEO's of three big insurance companies if each of them would at least commit to stopping their practice of recission except in cases where the company could show "intentional fraud." In other words, stopping the practice of dumping people overboard unless they were actually trying to screw the company over. No longer shafting really sick good people who had entered into their contract with their health insurance companies in good faith.
The answer from all three executives?
C'mon, you know the answer to this!
NO.
No.
NO.
In other words:
"Dear American People,
Fuck off and die.
No Love,
Your Friendly Neighborhood Health Insurance Corporate Overlords"
The big middle finger extension from the insurance overlords come in around 4:47 in the video, but the whole video is worth watching to get a good "feel" for what these pukesacks try to do the minute you or someone you love comes down with a serious illness.
Click to viewTHIS is why we need to have a public option for health care and why we need health care reform. If you think that it can't or won't affect you that these people are the ones who are going to be deciding whether you get to live or die based on whether or not they can shaft you when you're at your most vulnerable? You're either blissfully delusional or you've been extremely lucky... so far.
Health care reform is under attack currently, by GUESS WHO? The insurance lobbies who like things the way they are and want to reserve the right to throw you under the bus whenever and however they see fit. I, for one, am sick to death of being shat on by corporate types and I'm mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore.
If you're as pissed off and frankly...scared shitless...as I am after seeing this, you can hop over to Health Care For America Now and sign up to keep involved and call or write your Congress Critters to let them know that we want health care reform NOW. NOW NOW NOW.
This cannot wait. We cannot wait. While we wait, they continue business as usual and people die because of it. I, for one, am not waiting around until they're pulling this crap on me or someone I love.
Big thanks to popebuck1 for pointing this one out in his post on Friday.