Seeking and Finding Wholeness

An article title We Already Have Death Panels was posted on seeking wholeness .com on August 26, 2009. You can find it here.

A few days ago, on Wednesday September 02, 2009 the California Nurses Association released another sobering study that shows clearly the so called death panels are the norm. The claims denial rates by leading California insurers were just …  (I will leave this a blank for you to fill).

Here are the percentages of denied claims:

* PacifiCare — 39.6 percent
* Cigna — 32.7 percent
* HealthNet — 30 percent
* Kaiser Permanente — 28.3 percent
* Blue Cross — 27.9 percent
* Aetna — 6.4 percent

Find the CNA/NNOC research results below:

For Immediate Release
September 2, 2009

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.

The data will be presented by Don DeMoro, director of CNA/NNOC’s research arm, the Institute for Health and Socio-Economic Policy, at CNA/NNOC’s biennial convention next Tuesday, Sept. 8 in San Francisco. The convention will also feature a panel presentation from nurse leaders in Canada, Great Britain, and Australia exploding the myths about their national healthcare systems.

“With all the dishonest claims made by some politicians about alleged ‘death panels’ in proposed national legislation, the reality for patients today is a daily, cold-hearted rejection of desperately needed medical care by the nation’s biggest and wealthiest insurance companies simply because they don’t want to pay for it,” said Deborah Burger, RN, CNA/NNOC co-president.

For the first half of 2009, as the national debate over healthcare reform was escalating, the rejection rates are even more striking.

Claims denial rates by leading California insurers, first six months of 2009:

• PacifiCare — 39.6 percent
• Cigna — 32.7 percent
• HealthNet — 30 percent
• Kaiser Permanente — 28.3 percent
• Blue Cross — 27.9 percent
• Aetna — 6.4 percent

“Every claim that is denied represents a real patient enduring pain and suffering. Every denial has real, sometimes fatal consequences,” said Burger.

PacifiCare, for example, denied a special procedure for treatment of bone cancer for Nick Colombo, a 17-year-old teen from Placentia, Calif. Again, after protests organized by Nick’s family and friends, CNA/NNOC, and netroots activists, PacifiCare reversed its decision. But like Nataline Sarkisyan, the delay resulted in critical time lost, and Nick ultimately died. “This was his last effort and the procedure had worked before with people in Nick’s situation,” said his older brother Ricky.

Read more…

This is a good cartoon video titled ‘Why We Need Government-Run Universal Socialized Health Insurance‘. It explains why we need a public health insurance option or some sort of a government-run health system in the US.

The video compares Health Insurance to the fire department in a very effective manner. I’d like to add that fire departments used to be private and for profit in Chicago, then came the Chicago fire. After the Chicago fire the fire department was socialized to distribute risk and lower cost.

It’s ironic that nowadays fire department remain socialized, and work very well. We all expect the fire fighters to show up at a phone’s call, yet when your own body, your own intestines, brains, or heart are on fire (i.e. sick/ill) you cannot get the attention needed, since the system is so very broken.

Enjoy the video:

Animated by Andy Lubershane. More comics at http://www.earthlycomics.blogspot.com

Text transcript of the video:

Why we need government-run universal, socialized, call it what you want, health insurance.

We all know from basic civil class, or just being alive, that a lot of essential services are already government-run, universal, socialized, whatever you wanna call it.

Think water treatment, police, fire, postal service, coast guard, all those things you know are gonna be there for you, every single day without even thinking about them. We all pay our taxes and the government uses the money to pay for the things everyone needs just to get by.

Now, health care is just as essential as any of these services. Sure, a few of us may be lucky enough to make it through our whole lives without any medical problem but the rest of us depend on health care at some point in our lives just to get by. Besides its essentialness, there’s another reason health insurance is just like those government run, universal, socialized, whatever you wanna call them services, that’s this: There are very very few people that can afford to pay on their own the cost of health care when disaster strikes and they or someone they love gets really really sick.

So, we all need insurance, which basically means when we pool our money together enough so what when anyone of us gets really really sick there’s enough money in the pool to pay for that person to get better, that’s insurance.

But, who should we choose to manage the pool of our money and give out our money to the people who need it? Well, private insurance companies are the ones that we are using right now, but there’s a problem. On average, these companies take 10 – 20 cents out of every dollar we put in the pool.

Read more…

More than three out of every four Americans feel it is important to have a “choice” between a government-run health care insurance option and private coverage, according to a public opinion poll released on Thursday.

A new study by SurveyUSA puts support for a public option at a robust 77 percent, one percentage point higher than where it stood in June.

But the numbers tell another story, as well.

Earlier in the week, after pollsters for NBC dropped the word “choice” from their question on a public option, they found that only 43 percent of the public were in favor of “creating a public health care plan administered by the federal government that would compete directly with private health insurance companies.”

Rea more at Huffington Post