Study: Medical Bills Behind Most Bankruptcies

by Mike Hall, Jun 5, 2009 Crushing medical bills were the major cause of 62 percent of all personal bankruptcies in 2007. Even worse—75 percent of those with medical bill-related bankruptcies had health insurance. More bad news: The percentages cited above were based on data collected before the nation’s economy began its long nose dive. Says one of the study’s authors, David Himmelstein, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School: Unless you’re a Warren Buffett or Bill Gates, you’re one illness away from financial ruin in this country. If an illness is long enough and expensive enough, private insurance offers very little protection against medical bankruptcy, and that’s the major finding in our study. The U.S. health care financing system is broken, and not only for the poor and uninsured. Middle-class families frequently collapse under the strain of a health care system that treats physical wounds, but often inflicts fiscal ones. Researchers from Harvard and Ohio University published the study in the American Journal of Medicine. In the AFL-CIO’s 2009 Health Care for America Survey, thousands of the more than 23,000 respondents cited the burden of high medical costs, even with insurance coverage, as a major problem facing working families. The survey’s full findings will be released later this month. In the bankruptcy cases studied, hospital costs accounted for nearly half the medical expenses (48 percent), followed by prescription drugs (18.6 percent), doctor bills (15.1 percent) and insurance premiums (4.1 percent). Medical equipment and nursing home care rounded out the list. Says Himmelstein; For middle-class Americans, health insurance offers little protection. Most of us have policies with so many loopholes, co-payments and deductibles that illness can put you in the poorhouse. And even the best job-based health insurance often vanishes when a prolonged illness causes job loss—precisely when families need it most. One of the key elements of health care reform backed by President Obama and the AFL-CIO is inclusion of a public health insurance option to enable workers and families who either have private insurance coverage or no coverage to choose between private or public insurance plans. It has been vigorously attacked by the private insurance industry and most congressional Republicans. Deborah Thorne, associate professor of sociology at Ohio University and a co-author of the study, says medical costs leading to bankruptcy affect families who have played by the rules of our economic system, and they deserve nothing less than affordable health care. AFL-CIO Blog

Union Leaders Join in White House Meeting on Health Care, Social Security

By Mike Hall, Feb 24, 2009 After eight years with a virtual “Do Not Enter” sign at the White House front door, President Obama has opened 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. to leaders, policymakers and advocates of a wide range of views. Yesterday, union and business leaders, conservative and progressive economists, and think tankers and Democratic and Republican lawmakers came together for a “Fiscal Responsibility Summit.” At the opening session, Obama unveiled his outline to cut the $1.3 trillion federal deficit he inherited from the Bush administration in half by the end of his term by letting the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expire, reining in tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas and drawing down troops in Iraq, among other items. The more than 130 attendees broke into smaller groups to discuss ways to reform health care, strengthen Social Security and improve the budget process. Participants also examined ways to restore fairness to the tax code and reform government procurement and contracting out. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney attended the summit and cautioned against labeling the problems faced by Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid an “entitlement crisis” that requires drastic benefit cuts and spending caps. He said the underlying problem—and the one that desperately needs immediate attention—is “unaffordable health care costs.” The AFL-CIO welcomes the president’s summit on fiscal responsibility. It underscores the urgent need for comprehensive health care reform, something he has pointed out time and time again. We should all commit to working with the president and members of Congress to enact health care reform quickly in order to address the long-term fiscal position of the government, the competitive position of our businesses and the well-being of us all. Then we should move on to the job of strengthening Social Security. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), noting that health care costs run about $2.4 trillion a year, said: Our deficit really cannot be controlled until we figure out how to deal with health care costs. Robert Greenstein, the executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, puts it this way: The single biggest factor is rising health-care costs, not just in Medicare and Medicaid, but throughout our health-care system. A similar White House summit on health care is scheduled next month. Sweeney, along with AFT President Randi Weingarten and Ed Coyle, executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans, was part of the session devoted to examining Social Security. During the session, Lawrence Summers, head of the White House National Economic Council, said the crash of the nation’s financial system has dampened the move—championed by former President George W. Bush, many Republican leaders and conservative economists—to privatize Social Security, at least for now. The events in the market in the last couple of years, the sense of the need for the government to take core public responsibility for Social Security, has been strengthened, at least in may people’s minds. Though not perhaps all minds. Comments by House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) show that radical Social Security changes, such as privatization, are not that far off the far-right’s radar screen. He called for raising the retirement age to 70 years old, establishing a means test for Social Security, cutting benefits for some recipients and reducing the benefit increases that are designed to offset wage inflation.** Sweeney pointed out that an increasing number of older Americans rely on Social Security for most of their retirement income. If we lower living standards by reducing benefits to “fix” Social Security, we will only contribute to a downward spiral. Part of the problem today is that FICA [Social Security] contributions have been lower than they would have been because wages have stagnated. Let’s address this issue by restoring job standards, fixing health care, so it’s not a drain on wages and restoring the freedom to form and join unions—thus allowing wages to rise. Let’s not make it worse by lowering retirement income—an additional recessionary pressure that pulls the economy down. from AFL-CIO NOW blog **My own comment, what is this guy thinking? If you work, you pay into Social Security, your employer matches what you pay into it. Does he think that after working your whole life, your not entitled to the money you've paid into it? With the market crashing down, it is a good thing the Republicans didn't succeed in privatizing our Social Security.

14,000 Insured Lose Health Coverage Every Day

Mike Hall, February 18, 2009 In December and January, as the nation’s unemployment rate shot upward—hitting 7.6 percent in January—the number of Americans without health insurance neared the 50-million mark. Some 14,000 people a day, nearly 100,000 a week, lost their health insurance during that two-month span, according to a forthcoming analysis by James Kvaal and Ben Furnas, reports the Center for American Progress’ Wonk Room. The growing number of working families that are losing their health care coverage highlights the need for swift action on comprehensive health care reform. The economic recovery package signed yesterday by President Obama offers a health care lifeline for jobless workers. Under the bill, workers who lose their jobs are eligible for a 65 percent subsidy to cover their health care premiums under COBRA for nine months. COBRA is the program that allows workers to maintain for 18 months the same coverage they had through their employer if they can pay the premiums. But those premiums often exceed $1,000 a month, a huge cost for an unemployed worker. The economic recovery bill originally provided broader help for jobless workers, including allowing workers to enroll in Medicaid if they couldn’t afford COBRA even with the new subsides and enabling older workers to remain in COBRA until they qualified for Medicare. But as the Wonk Room points out, negotiators seeking bipartisan support considered Republican objections and stripped those provisions. Still, only three Republicans voted for the stimulus bill. With the economy far from a quick turnaround and job losses continuing to mount, health care experts say the number of people without health insurance could grow to staggering levels—making health care reform even more critical. Says Ron Pollack, president of Families USA: The regrettable absence of the Medicaid coverage provision helps to underscore the importance of enacting meaningful health care reform in the very near future. With the adoption of the economic recovery legislation, it is time to start the health reform process so that legislative action can be completed this year. 1 comment catbear955 on 19.02.2009 One of my brothers’ long-time friends was diagnosed with lung cancer, and then laid off—this COBRA subsidy will definitely mean a better quality of life during this difficult time. from AFL-CIO NOW Blog FYI-Two of the Republican Senators are our own, Senator Olympia Snowe and Senator Susan Collins. The third Republican Senator is Arlen Specter from Pennsylvania.

Two Polls show Public Doesn't Buy Insurance Industry's Spin on Health Care

by Mike Hall, Feb. 3, 2009 Our continuing series examining health care reform proposals, issues, opinions and surveys today takes a look at what the public thinks about the private insurance industry. And it’s not good news for the big for-profit corporations that are doing their darndest to roadblock meaningful reform. Two recent polls show the public is not buying what the private insurance industry is peddling. The AFL-CIO has not endorsed a specific plan but has established certain principles around which any plan should be built (click here for more details). One of the key elements must be a public health insurance plan option—such as the one President Obama is proposing as an alternative to private insurance. The insurance companies and right-wingers have teamed up to try to kill such a plan and convince the public it would drive up their costs, limit coverage and leave millions uninsured. A large majority of those surveyed told Lake Research Partners that a public health insurance plan option might just be the medicine needed to shape up the private, for-profit insurance industry and improve its performance. The Lake survey found: 62 percent of respondents believe a public health insurance plan option would spend less on profits and administration and force private insurers to compete. But only 28 percent believe the insurance industry’s claim that such a plan would be a “big, government bureaucracy.” 60 percent believe that if private insurers are really more efficient than government, as they claim, then they wouldn’t have any trouble competing with a public health insurance plan option. Only 23 percent buy the industry’s assertion that a public health insurance option would have an unfair advantage over private plans. Only 27 percent believe the claim that a public health insurance option will cause millions of people to be dumped from their private coverage, and just 26 percent believe such a plan will force people into lower-quality care, including rationing and long waits. Meanwhile, a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health shows most people say it’s time for the government to tighten up the rules on how private health insurance companies do business. One of the major complaints working families have expressed about the private insurance industry is its nearly universal refusal to cover anyone with a “pre-existing condition.” But the Kaiser/Harvard survey found that 72 percent of respondents favor requiring insurance companies to cover those with prior illnesses, even if it means healthier customers have to pay higher premiums. Also, 65 percent are in favor of a government rule limiting insurance companies’ administrative costs, while 62 percent say the government should cap insurance company profits. The Kaiser/Harvard findings show that the private, for-profit insurance industry’s years-long campaign to paint a government role in health care reform as a deadly intrusion on the sacred and “efficient” free market—remember “Harry and Louise”—isn’t working like it used to. The public once may have bought that argument against government regulation, but the tide is turning. A majority, 51 percent, say there is too little government regulation of health care costs, twice as many as say there is too much government regulation. You can bet there will be a ferocious campaign by the private insurance companies and big health care corporations to fight any regulation of costs. We’ve got a lot of work to do to counter that. Click here to read what a group of small business owners have to say about a public insurance plan option as part of health care reform. Click here to take a look at proposals by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC) calling for a single-payer system and recommendations from Health CEOs for Health Reform. Click here to read about University of California professor Jacob Hacker’s call for creation of a public health care insurance plan as an option for workers and families who either have private insurance coverage or no coverage at all. 2 Comments Paul B on 04.02.2009 at 00:31 Thankfully we won’t have to contend with the corrupt insurance industry shill Tom Daschle and pretend he is on our side and for real health care reform as part of the supposedly progressive Obama administration. The former Senator used his status to become an obscenely overpaid lobbyist for the very ‘health care’ industry that has left millions uninsured and the ones who are insured paying exorbitant prices for corporate ‘health care’. Daschle profited mightily and - surprise - forgot to pay taxes! shouldn’t he be on trial? He’s no better than fellow Republicrat Bill Frist. Let’s tell Obama to appoint Rose Ann deMoro to be HHS Secretary, or Dr Quentin Young of Physicians for a National Health Program. The we’d see real “Change we can believe in…..’ topgun on 04.02.2009 at 11:34 There are a couple of serious problems here. First, effective regulation of the health insurance industry would require a huge, costly administrative bureaucracy and, more to the point, the political will to withstand a $12 billion industry hell-bent on neutralizing its efforts at regulation. Second, creating a public option while leaving the private insurance system intact raises the prospect of a “two-tier” system in which the public plan becomes a dumping ground for everybody private insurers find unprofitiable to cover, thereby raising its costs significantly. An all-inclusive public plan would be cheaper, more efficient, and more equitable. A public option may prove to be the best we can get right now, but we’ll never know if we’re not willling to put up a fight for something better. Organized labor should put up a fight for HR 676 rather than caving in before the battle has even begun. AFL-CIO NOW Blog, Feb. 4, 2009

AFL-CIO President: Health Care Reform Critical to Economic Recovery

by James Parks, Jan. 30, 2000 Reforming the nation’s health care system, including cost controls, is a critical part of any national economic fix, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said today, and he urged lawmakers and the White House to make it an urgent priority. Speaking to the 21st Annual Conference on Social Insurance, Fiscal Responsibility, and Economic Growth in Washington, D.C., Sweeney said the union movement is ratcheting up its commitment to creating a national system of affordable health care: This year, we’re adding a sword’s point to that commitment: We have no time left for dithering, we’re in a perilous economic ditch, and we will not dig our way out and fix our economy until we fix our health care system. The conference was hosted by the National Academy of Social Insurance, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization made up of the nation’s leading experts on social insurance issues, such as Social Security, Medicare and workers’ compensation. Its mission is to promote understanding of how social insurance contributes to economic security and a vibrant economy. Click here to read Sweeney’s entire speech. Any health care reform must not only provide dependable delivery of service, Sweeney said, but contain costs as well. In health care reform, the single toughest issue is cost control—without cost savings, the debates over financing and the relative roles of public and private insurance programs are useless. National health care reform without cost controls is like moving furniture into a burning house. Workers understand that the nation’s health care crisis contributed in large part to the current economic collapse, Sweeney said. We in labor know the sad history all too well—we’ve been trying to bargain good wages for our members for all those years, and having to forego pay increases to maintain our benefits and keep premiums and co-payments under control. The bottom line is that health care costs have been picking the pockets of working families for a long time. After basic expenses, families have been left with less and less money to spend and save, and that has undermined the corner of our economy we call consumer spending. All stakeholders in the health care system—government, employers, insurers, workers, the medical community and pharmaceutical companies—will have to accept “their responsibilities when it comes to controlling costs and guaranteeing quality care,” Sweeney added. For the first time in many years, we have the political advantage when it comes to meaningful health care reform, and we must seize the moment. We must do it not only for the sake of the young, the old, the poor, the working poor, and the middle class who are depending on us, but in order to turn our economy around and make it work for everyone. 2 comments mustanguy on 31.01.2009 at 02:11 Thank GOD we have a leader that is on the side of the working man. I hope that all sides will work together to get us out of this mess. Wow when will the CEO’s wake up ,I think they are all brain dead, as to what they have done getting big money for to make a company go broke. We might have to take over ther jobs. a roadkill has more brains. TrueDemocrat on 02.02.2009 at 12:18 Plan Congressional Visits During Presidents’ Day Recess Congressman John Conyers re-introduced HR 676 into the 111th Congress on January 26th. The bill keeps the same number, HR 676, as it has since it was first introduced in 2003. Action Alert: Because this is a new Congress, representatives who co-sponsored HR 676 in the 110th Congress need to sign on again. Plus we need to get many more. Please make an appointment to see your representative over the Presidents’ Day recess that begins Feb. 13 and lasts until Feb. 22. Representatives will be in their home districts, and we need to ask them to sign on to and speak up for HR 676—and, of course, to vote for the Employee Free Choice Act. Please make sure your representative has a copy of the HR 676 resolution passed by your union. New HR 676 Improves Worker Protection An important improvement in the latest version of HR 676 is the expansion of protection for workers in insurance companies, doctors’ offices, hospitals and other work sites who are displaced or whose jobs are eliminated due to reduced administration. The new HR 676 guarantees to these workers, in addition to first priority in retraining and job placement in the new system, the right to benefits equal to their full current salary for up to two years while they make the transition. HR 676 will have a job creating impact, but the jobs created will not be the current type of billing and clerical jobs, nor jobs related to denying benefits. HR 676 is a pro-worker bill which, for the first time, will guarantee that no worker, ever again, will lose their health coverage! At this link, you will find the 33 who have already signed on as co-sponsors of HR 676, including four newly elected Democrats (Massa, Polis, Pingree, Tonko). http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D?d111:1:./temp/~bdxQ2O:@@@P/bss/111search.html HR 676 would institute a single payer health care system by expanding a greatly improved Medicare system to everyone residing in the U. S. HR 676 would cover every person for all necessary medical care including prescription drugs, hospital, surgical, outpatient services, primary and preventive care, emergency services, dental, mental health, home health, physical therapy, rehabilitation (including for substance abuse), vision care, hearing services including hearing aids, chiropractic, durable medical equipment, palliative care, and long term care. HR 676 ends deductibles and co-payments. HR 676 would save hundreds of billions annually by eliminating the high overhead and profits of the private health insurance industry and HMOs. In the 110th Congress, HR 676 had 93 co-sponsors in addition to Conyers. HR 676 has been endorsed by 481 union organizations in 49 states including 118 Central Labor Councils and Area Labor Federations and 39 state AFL-CIO’s (KY, PA, CT, OH, DE, ND, WA, SC, WY, VT, FL, WI, WV, SD, NC, MO, MN, ME, AR, MD-DC, TX, IA, AZ, TN, OR, GA, OK, KS, CO, IN, AL, CA, AK, MI, MT, NE, NY, NV & MA). This is what Sweeney does not want! Call your congress person and she or he to sign on as a co-sponsor for this legislation, the answer to the health care crisis. AFL-CIO NOW blog Feb. 2, 2009 FYI Our Union - MSEA-SEIU - has also endorsed and supports HR676. The board of directors made that endorsement at their July 2008 meeting, thanks to the good work of Penny Whitney-Asdourian and Scott Neumeyer.

Will Small Business Owners Support Health Care Reform this Time?

by Mike Hall, Jan 27, 2009 As part of our series looking at health care reform proposals and initiatives from a range of groups and experts, today we take a look at the small business community. In the early 1990s, when President Clinton launched his ambitious campaign for comprehensive health care reform, it was the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) that struck the sharpest knife into the reform initiative. But a group of small business owners and employers and self-employed entrepreneurs has found startling similarities between what small business owners see as key issues in health care reform and some of the central principles unions say any plan must be built around. Main Street Alliance, a network of state-based small business health care coalitions, recently surveyed 1,200 small business owners. The coalition also conducted in-depth interviews and found that small business owners and employers:

• Are concerned deeply about the adequacy of insurance, including the breadth and affordability of services covered by their plans.
• Believe government should provide a public alternative to private coverage.
• Want increased oversight of private insurers.
• Are willing to contribute their fair share toward a system that makes health care work for small businesses, their employees and the communities they serve.

One of the key issues for unions today is defending the public insurance plan that President Obama is proposing as an alternative to private insurance and that insurance companies and right-wingers have teamed up to try kill.

The Main Street Alliance asked small business owners to choose between a reform plan with a public insurance option and one with expanded private market options. Fifty-nine percent preferred the public plan option, while just 26 percent picked the private insurance option.

Here’s what Jim Houser, who runs an auto repair business in Portland, Ore., has to say about insurance companies:

Most health insurance companies have so much power. They decide who is covered and who isn’t, they determine what qualifies as a pre-existing condition and what doesn’t, and they can deny coverage for a procedure and you often have to go through a long appeals process. Health insurance companies are making huge profits off of people’s ill health: that means money that could be taking care of people is going into the pockets of CEOs and investors.

The Obama administration is developing a comprehensive plan to address a broad range of health care concerns. The AFL-CIO has not endorsed a specific plan but has established certain principles that any plan should be built around.

Reform must secure high-quality health care for all; lower the costs that are now crushing working families and businesses; and share responsibility among employers, government and individuals among other principles. Click here for more information.

Of course, the Main Street Alliance’s report, Taking the Pulse of Main Street: Small Businesses, Health Insurance, and Priorities for Reform, is just one of many studies and surveys that needed to be carefully examined. But it does show that while the NFIB may claim to be “the voice of small business,” small business owners and employers speak with many voices. Small business owners in our communities just might be an ally for health care reform.

Click here to read the full survey. Click here to take a look at proposals by California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC) calling for a single payer system and recommendations from Health CEOs for Health Reform.

Click here to read about University of California professor Jacob Hacker’s call for a creation of a public health care insurance plan as an option for workers and families who either have private insurance coverage or no coverage at all.

1 comment

Jimmy1920 on 28.01.2009 at 13:33

Mike

Important Point. Small businesses and their employees probably have the most to gain from meaningful health care reform. They will be able to draw on a larger talent pool because employees won’t need to make job decisons based on the health benefit package.It will level the competitve playing field. Individuals with creative ideas will have one less barrier to overcome in bringing new ideas to the marketplace.The problem is that the NFIB and Chambers of Commerce and many business associations are in the business of marketing their own health insurance programs. They are not speaking for the interests of their members, but for their own business interests. In addition, many of the smallest businesses aren’t don’t even belong to an association.Fortunately a group like this is willing to come forward and be a genunie advocate for small businesses and put common sense ahead of ideology and self interest.See my own blog posts on the topic. http://thehealthcaremaze.wordpress.com/2008/11/22/health-insurance-for-small-business/http://thehealthcaremaze.wordpress.com/2008/10/25/ask-jesse-the-artist/

from AFL-CIO Now Blog

Options for Addressing Our Nation’s Health Care Crisis

by Mike Hall, Jan 15, 2009 This is a series of occasional articles looking at health care reform proposals and initiatives from a wide range of groups and experts. We take a brief look today at two reports, one from a major health care union and the other by a group of CEOs from five large health plans or systems and a drug company president. The incoming Obama administration is developing a comprehensive plan to address a broad range of health care concerns. The AFL-CIO has not endorsed a specific plan but has established certain principles that any plan should be built around. Reform must secure high-quality health care for all; lower the costs that are now crushing working families and businesses and share responsibility among employers, government and individuals among other principles. Click here for more information. To apply those principles to the debate as it is shaping up in Washington these days, the AFL-CIO has developed a list of key issues based upon extensive discussions with national unions since the election. For example, a key issue for unions today is defending the public insurance plan that President-elect Obama is proposing as an alternative to private insurance and that insurance companies and right-wingers have teamed up to try to kill. Earlier this week, the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC), which backs a single-payer, Medicare-for-all health care reform plan, released a study that says such a plan would not only guarantee health care for all, but would be a major boost to the nation’s staggering economy. The study, conducted by the Institute of Health and Socio-Economic Policy, says a single-payer plan would provide a major stimulus for the U.S. economy by creating 2.6 million new jobs and infusing $317 billion in new business and public revenues, with another $100 billion in wages into the U.S. economy. CNA/NNOC co-President Geri Jenkins, RN, says: These dramatic new findings document for the first time that a single-payer system could not only solve our healthcare crisis, but also substantially contribute to putting America back to work and assisting the economic recovery. Click here to read the full study. Meanwhile, Health CEOs for Health Reform (HC4HR)—launched by the New American Foundation last month—is saying many of the right things about health care, including the need for major reforms. That’s quite a shift from the health industry’s long-held, “Just Say No,” stance. Says Lloyd Dean, president and CEO of Catholic Healthcare West: It’s time for hospitals and physicians to address the reality that health care costs too much and that our current ways of financing and delivering health care are outdated and not sustainable. As providers we must be accountable for the quality and affordability of the care we deliver. Here’s something you likely would not have heard from an insurance executive in the not-too-distant past. Bruce Bodaken, chairman and CEO of Blue Shield of California, says: It’s time for health industry CEO’s to step up and say what has to be said, that achieving coverage for all will require each of us to change the way we do business. With regard to health plans that means giving the right to pick and choose our customers based on how healthy they are. Sure sounds good, but the question is will their action follow their words, or are those words just a cover. Click here to read the HC4HR announcement, here for the AFL-CIO’s response and here for recent reports at the AFL-CIO health care site. from AFL-CIO NOW blog