AHIP – Healthcare-NOW

AHIP Gave More Than $100 Million to Chamber’s Efforts to Derail Health Care Reform

By Chris Frates for National Journal – The nation’s leading health insurance industry group gave more than $100 million to help fuel the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s 2009 and 2010 efforts to defeat President Obama’s signature health care reform law, National Journal’s Influence Alley has learned. During the final push to kill the bill before…

AHIP Hooray!

From the Harvard Crimson – If you were anywhere near Harvard Business School last Saturday you might have seen a 12-foot tall puppet dancing to accordion music while a merry band of “Congresspeople” and “health insurance executives” swilled champagne, showered each other in cash and sang round after round of “For She’s A Jolly Good…

House Passes Bill Averting Cut in Medicare Reimbursements

From the NY Times – The House gave final approval on Thursday to a bill that would avert a 25 percent cut in Medicare payments to doctors by freezing reimbursement rates at current levels until the end of next year. The bill goes now to President Obama, who hailed the action by Congress and promised…

In Breakaway, Big Health Insurers Seek To Boost Washington Clout

By Bara Vaida for NPR – Five of the nation’s largest health insurance companies are looking to build their own inside-the-Beltway coalition to influence implementation of the new health law and congressional efforts to change it. The companies – Aetna, Cigna, Humana, UnitedHealthcare and WellPoint — are shopping around Washington for a public relations firm…

Action Alert: Expect Better from PBS

Recently, we announced Frontline’s new program, “Obama’s Deal,” which included a segment that featured single-payer advocates arrested in the Senate Finance Committee protesting the exclusion of single-payer witnesses from the proceedings. It exposed some of the sordid deals struck by congressional lawmakers and the White House with the health insurance industry and Big Pharma. While…

If Private Health Insurance Companies Are Evil, Why Are You Forcing Me to Be a Customer?

By Jon Walker for Fire Dog Lake – A big part of the final push for this health care reform effort is focused on how terrible the private insurance companies are. On the White House blog, communications director Dan Pfeiffer is attacking the huge premium increases and monopoly power of some private insurers. HCAN is…

A Death Every 12 Minutes: The Price of Not Having Medicare for All

By John Geyman for Huffington Post – Americans are dying at a faster rate — 1 every 12 minutes, 5 an hour, 120 a day, 45,000 a year — not from war or natural disaster, but from lack of health insurance. That’s the stunning finding of a study published today in the American Journal of…

Single payer MD’s not invited to White House (Video)

The President meets with doctors who support his reforms but excludes MD’s who support “medicare for all.”

Insurance Claims Denied (Video)

Bob Schieffer interviews Donna Smith from the California Nurses Association and Robert Zerkilbach of AHIP on a new report on insurance claims. Watch CBS News Videos Online

Sick and Wrong

How Washington is screwing up health care reform – and why it may take a revolt to fix it By Matt Taibbi for Rolling Stone – Let’s start with the obvious: America has not only the worst but the dumbest health care system in the developed world. It’s become a black leprosy eating away at…