13 hours ago
The National Anthem -- And Why We Need Health Care Reform So Desperately
My health insurer here in California is Anthem Blue Cross. When I first opted for it, it was just called Blue Cross. Then, a year or so back, I was notified that an entity called “Anthem” would now be running my insurance policy. I didn’t think much about it at the time. I’ve had the usual problems most people have with their health insurers – confusing bills, co-payments and deductibles that never seem to add up, a bureaucracy that gives every impression of being more interested in fighting me than helping me — but nothing more.
Now, Anthem Blue Cross is going a step further. It’s raising rates for individual policyholders by as much as 39 percent. That’s fifteen times faster than inflation. So far, my group policy hasn’t been affected but I’m expecting the worst.
Anthem says it has no choice. It says the recession has forced many policyholders to drop coverage because they can’t afford it. So Anthem has to spread its costs over a much smaller pool, which ratchets up the cost of each. In addition, says Anthem, too many of those remaining policyholders have greater medical needs than the average. So Anthem is just doing what it has to do to survive.
This argument sounds logical until you look more closely. First, Anthem and its corporate parent, WellPoint, are enormously profitable. WellPoint’s profits rose to $2.7 billion last quarter. Even if you subtract one-time-only financial maneuvers, WellPoint is still fat and happy, which makes Anthem fat and happy. Everyone is fat and happy except Anthem’s policy holders, who are being skewered.
Anthem’s argument is even more questionable when you consider that Anthem has been among the most aggressive opponents of the health-care bills passed by the House and Senate. If Anthem were sincere about why it’s raising its rates, it would be embracing the legislation. The Senate and House bills would add tens of millions of Americans to insurance pools – thereby spreading the costs over more people and avoiding the very problem Anthem says is now forcing it to raise its rates so much.
Even more troubling is the fact that Anthem obviously believes it can raise its rates by as much as 39 percent without losing every one of its remaining customers with average or even somewhat above-average medical needs. The only way it could possibly raise its rates so high and expect to keep its customers would be if Anthem’s customers have no other choice. In other words, Anthem’s strategy makes sense only if Anthem faces little or no competition from other health insurers.I wouldn’t be surprised if this were the case. Insurers, remember, are exempt from the federal antitrust laws. And WellPoint, Anthem’s parent, is the largest insurer in America.
Anthem is a microcosm of what ails our private for-profit health insurance system – the most expensive in the world, whose costs are rising faster than anywhere in the world; a system rapidly becoming unaffordable to more and more Americans, in which insurers are rapidly consolidating into behemoths that have almost no competitors. And a system in which the biggest health insurers are lobbying like mad against reform because they like things just the way they are. They can squeeze the public and the public has no alternative but to pay up.
All this makes Anthem one of he best arguments for reform — which is probably why the President mentioned Anthem today when he emerged from what was billed as a “bipartisan” meeting to talk about health care and jobs.Obama says he’s open to any new ideas from Republicans for how to control health care costs and expand coverage. The problem is Republicans don’t want to play this game. They don’t care about controlling costs or expanding coverage. They care only about taking back the House and/or the Senate next November. And they believe a means toward attaining this goal is to prevent Obama from achieving a victory on health care. The sooner the President accepts that undeniable fact — and gets the House to pass the Senate’s bill, and then uses the reconciliation process (that requires only 51 votes in the Senate) to deal with any remaining irreconcilable differences between the House and Senate — the better.
In the meantime, next chance I get I’m switching to another insurer — if that makes any difference at all in what I pay or the service I get, which seems increasingly doubtful. I’m also joining any Tea Party of mad-as-hellers fed up with how Big Insurance, Big Pharma, Wall Street, and much of the rest of corporate America have taken over our democracy.
via robertreich
The New Jim Crow «
* There are more African Americans under correctional control today — in prison or jail, on probation or parole — than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.
* As of 2004, more African American men were disenfranchised (due to felon disenfranchisement laws) than in 1870, the year the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified prohibiting laws that explicitly deny the right to vote on the basis of race.
* If you take into account prisoners, a large majority of African American men in some urban areas, like Chicago, have been labeled felons for life. These men are part of a growing undercaste — not class, caste — a group of people who are permanently relegated, by law, to an inferior second-class status. They can be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education, and public benefits — much as their grandparents and great-grandparents once were during the Jim Crow era.
**GOOD ARTICLE WORTH READING**
via kay-smith
I'm in desperate need of new music
I mostly listen to rock. I definitely don’t listen to hip-hop, country or bubblegum pop.
What I always listen to:
- The Beatles
- Radiohead
- Queen
What I’ve been listening to a lot lately:
- The Hold Steady
- Ramona Falls
- Florence and the Machine
Based on this, does anyone have any suggestions?
eralion:uppereastside:fuckyeahsodomites:jennifrey:pinkpanthers:alwayscurious: (via lewishamdreamer)
Love is a Human Right
via eralion
Just realized that TWO Caras follow me.
If I’ve named a Cara before, it’s caraobrien, per tradition of using pieces of tumblr names when referring to one.
And because I’m the best one around. But that just goes without saying.
via lemdi
formspring.me
Do you find jokes about rape more offensive than jokes about murder or war? Why? I’m not trying to trigger an argument over memes, just curious about your opinion on the generalities. :)
Personally, rape jokes are just more of an emotional thing. I don’t necessary rank how offended I am by subject and I think it depends on the joke, but since I blog about rape so often, I feel the need to reiterate the information I’ve posted whenever I see some douchey rape joke come across my dash.
And I’m one of the many women out there who know a bit about feeling physically violated because of my gender, so rape jokes sting. It’s a more personal subject for me.
On this day in history: McCarthy accuses State Department of communist infiltration (February 9, 1950) «
Joseph Raymond McCarthy, a relatively obscure Republican senator from Wisconsin, announces during a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, that he has in his hand a list of 205 communists who have infiltrated the U.S. State Department. The unsubstantiated declaration, which was little more than a publicity stunt, suddenly thrust Senator McCarthy into the national spotlight.
Asked to reveal the names on the list, the reckless and opportunistic senator named officials he determined guilty by association, such as Owen Lattimore, an expert on Chinese culture and affairs who had advised the State Department. McCarthy described Lattimore as the “top Russian spy” in America.
These and other equally shocking accusations prompted the Senate to form a special committee, headed by Senator Millard Tydings of Maryland, to investigate the matter. The committee found little to substantiate McCarthy’s charges, but McCarthy nevertheless touched a nerve in the American public, and during the next two years he made increasingly sensational charges, even attacking President Harry S. Truman’s respected former secretary of state, George C. Marshall.
In 1953, a newly Republican Congress appointed McCarthy chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of Governmental Operations, and “McCarthyism” reached a fever pitch. In widely publicized hearings, McCarthy bullied defendants under cross-examination with unlawful and damaging accusations, destroying the reputations of hundreds of innocent citizens and officials.
In the early months of 1954, McCarthy, who had already lost the support of much of his party because of his bullying tactics, finally overreached himself when he took on the U.S. Army. Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower pushed for an investigation of McCarthy’s conduct, and the televised hearings exposed the senator as a reckless and excessive tyrant who never produced proper documentation for any of his charges. In December, the Senate voted to condemn him for misconduct. By the time of his death from alcoholism in 1957, the influence of Senator Joseph McCarthy in Congress was negligible.
Dick Cheney and biocide are, apparently, synonimous.
- Sam: "What do you call something that kills everything?"
- John Alan: ". . . Dick Cheney?"
via sarahsutherland
1 day ago
How about you tell her your rape joke? I’m sure she will think you’re hilarious. Douchebag.
From Condition Critical, a photo timeline of the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Rape has been systematically employed as a weapon of war in the DRC, demoralizing and terrifying the civilian population. Thousands of women are raped every year, and nearly 50% of the victims of sexual violence are children. During the first 6 months of 2008, 5,000 cases of rape were reported in the North Kivu province alone.
via littleteacup
