Dodd and Larson Get an Earful on Healthcare

Via Mark Pazniokas of the Hartford Courant, 675 angry and frustrated people showed up to this healthcare forum at Goodwin College:

On the first day of a listening tour on health care, an issue pivotal to the new Congress and his own re-election, U.S. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd got an earful Friday.

The first comment came from a furious homeless shelter manager: He and his clients have no coverage, yet insurance giant American International Group got an $85 billion federal loan.

Over 90 minutes, the Democratic senator heard from a string of constituents, who waved their hands, hoping for a chance to describe a struggle to hang onto middle-class lives after losing jobs and affordable health care. A few were angry, others just scared.

On the way out, Dodd embraced one woman who burst into tears as she described losing health coverage for her disabled 2-year-old. Dodd held her until she stopped sobbing.

Dodd says that Tom Daschle, Obama's pick to guide healthcare reform, will be coming to Connecticut to discuss the issue. I say that they better be prepared to get another earful because the incremental changes being proposed will not answer the massive problems we are facing.

Problems like this:

"[the forum] included the president of Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, a reassuring signal to Connecticut's insurance industry."

Yep! Dodd and Larson think that these people are supposed to be our allies on this issue.

MA regulators: Did Blue Cross/Blue Shield and Partners HealthCare collude to fix prices and raise rates 75%?

Partners, insurer under scrutiny

Attorney General Martha Coakley has launched an investigation into whether the state's largest health insurance company and its largest healthcare provider may have illegally colluded to increase the price of health insurance statewide over the last nine years, according to several legal and government sources.

The attorney general sent formal demands for information to Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts and Partners HealthCare late last week, the sources say, calling for a detailed account of their contract negotiations in recent years.

Since 2000, Blue Cross has boosted the rate it pays for medical care by Partners doctors and hospitals by 75 percent, dramatically more than the increases given to most other Massachusetts hospitals. Blue Cross now pays $2 billion a year to Partners, parent company of Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women's hospitals.

Why do we put up with this?

I don't want these insurance industries' input into my healthcare in any way, shape or form. This the kind of health care the insurance giants have provided us thus far:



H/t nyceve for the video, where I encourage you to go read the entire piece and watch all the videos:

We all know that during the Bush regime, American citizens never saw the coffins of our fallen heroes coming back from Iraq.

Americans are also shielded from the brutal ugliness of our collapsed healthcare system. The traditional media is ill-informed (what else is new?), and rarely, if ever, give us frank and candid reporting about the grotesque realities of the U.S. healthcare catastrophe. So the BBC picks up the slack.

One last quote from Dodd:

"I hear people talking about a single-payer plan and the like," Dodd said. "That isn't going to happen. It's going to be a combination of public, private."

We already have a failed combination of public and private. We need the proven model of single payer and private practitioners. You want to stay in Congress with these kinds of answers, Senator Dodd?

"That isn't going to happen."

Why not send Senator Dodd a message?

"Single payer IS on the table!"

U.S. Senator Chris Dodd
448 Russell Building | Washington D.C., 20510
Tel: (202) 224-2823 | Fax: (202) 224-1083

Ya might want to mention the problem with his Blue Cross buddies, as well.