Look North - Stategic Lessons Learned

Article | The American Prospect: "Building upon the public's highly negative experiences with insurance company's and hospital administrators, the campaign needs to use public 'street heat' to intensify the level of public anger, focus it relentlessly on insurance, drug, and hospital decision-makers, and pressure specific 'swing' Republican legislators.

'We're going to have to spark a public backlash against the culprits blocking health care reform,' says Kraig. 'We need to get people indignant about particular actors and to call for government to be their watchdog in the health economy.'"

The Next Failure of Health Reform

Vincent Navarro: The Next Failure of Health Reform
"Why does this situation persist in the U.S.?
For any society, medicine is a mirror of the power relations in that society. And nowhere is the lack of human rights more evident than in the house of medicine. In the U.S., insensitivity toward human needs goes hand-in-hand with enormous profits made from that suffering. The root of the problem, as noted earlier, is not lack of money but the channels through which that money is managed and spent. The problem is the privatization of the funding of medicine that allows profits to boom. The insurance and pharmaceutical industries enjoy the highest rates of profit in the U.S. Just last year, insurance industry profits reached $12 billion, and pharmaceutical industry profits $49 billion, the highest in the U.S. and in the world. According to Fortune Magazine, health-related industries are among the most profitable industries in the country. A lot of money is being made from people's suffering. "

Check out the rest of the commentary about reform proposals being bandied about right now.

Physicians criticize Massachusetts health insurance plan

People's Weekly World - Physicians criticize Massachusetts health insurance plan: "Over 250 Massachusetts doctors have signed an open letter to the country warning that the health reform model enacted by Massachusetts is failing and that a single payer program is the only alternative.

An Open Letter to the Nation from Massachusetts Physicians: Early Outcomes from Massachusetts' Health Care Reform

We write to alert colleagues and the nation to the disturbing early outcomes of Massachusetts' widely-heralded approach to health care reform. Although we wish that the current reform could secure health insurance for all, its failings reinforce our conviction that only a single payer program can assure patients the care they need."

Blue Cross letter brings outrage - San Jose Mercury News

Blue Cross letter brings outrage - San Jose Mercury News

"It came in response to a letter Blue Cross wrote last week asking doctors to rat out their patients with undisclosed prior medical conditions so the insurer can dump them from its rolls.

The move comes just months after Blue Cross was fined $1 million by the state for unfairly revoking coverage to scores of its policy holders."

NEJM -- Market-Based Failure -- A Second Opinion on U.S. Health Care Costs

NEJM -- Market-Based Failure -- A Second Opinion on U.S. Health Care Costs: "Changing demographics and medical technology pose a cost challenge for every nation's system, but ours is the outlier. The extreme failure of the United States to contain medical costs results primarily from our unique, pervasive commercialization. The dominance of for-profit insurance and pharmaceutical companies, a new wave of investor-owned specialty hospitals, and profit-maximizing behavior even by nonprofit players raise costs and distort resource allocation. Profits, billing, marketing, and the gratuitous costs of private bureaucracies siphon off $400 billion to $500 billion of the $2.1 trillion spent, but the more serious and less appreciated syndrome is the set of perverse incentives produced by commercial dominance of the system."

UnitedHealth accused of shortchanging patients

UnitedHealth accused of shortchanging patients
"AMA weighs in

There is a profit motive for keeping reimbursements low, said Dr. Nancy Nielson, president-elect of the American Medical Association. She also complained that there is no oversight of the data provided by Ingenix.

"It's shocking and unacceptable for an insurance company to hide behind a shroud of secrecy," Nielson said. "Its another example of United Health playing by its own rules.""

I know United Health hides it's for profit business in MN where HMOs must be non-profit. However, it is involved in selling service to those same HMOs. I wonder if it is behind the scenes in WI as well. Does anyone know?

MN Single Payer Bill Introduced at Winona Town Hall Meeting

Winona Daily News - 6.0

A great presentation happened Saturday Feb. 9th.
Rep. Madore was especially riveting. Her story is even more clearly stated in a Mpls. Trib. article.

The proposed law can be reviewed at the Minnesota Health Plan web site.