Hey everyone, look what I received yesterday!

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

This is and email I received from HCAN.

Hi Marc,

Thank you so much for sharing your story! Alex forwarded it on to me to use for the Health Care for America Now Campaign. I just wanted to confirm that you're ok with us using your story on our website and giving your name to reporters interested in adding a personal angle to article. We'll never give any reporter your story without letting you know first. In most cases, the reporter will actually call and interview you so they get the story first hand.

If this all sounds good, can you share your phone number with me so we have it on file?

Thanks!
Vanessa

:fistbump:

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

1. Good going and thank you! nt

[angstlessk]

2. wow..your famous...I can say I knew you when!!! good luck..can you link

your story?

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

5. re: link

I was notified Friday, so I don't know when it's going up. I spoken with Alex but maybe they want my backstory before they post it. Anyway, I think it will go here. I'll bump this when it's actually posted :)

http://blog.healthcareforamericanow.org/category/tell-us-your-story/

In the meantime, here's what they will post.

At the end of 2007, I was one of 2700 employees of a Fortune 500 company headquartered in Chicago to be laid-off. My health care provider from mid-2001 through the end of 2007 was BCBS-IL. Unable to find employment in the successive months, by May of 2008 I found my monthly COBRA payment of $435 onerous. An independent search turned up a couple of reasonably priced policies offered by two insurers, one of which being BCBS-IL. The monthly premium offered by BCBS-IL was $138. But I was denied because I disclosed that I have a "pre-existing condition." That’s nothing new since the time I was hospitalized and diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1991. At that time, I was very ill, uninsured, and unable to pay. For years after, I was harassed by collection agencies. Eventually, I filed for bankruptcy. When unemployed, as I am today and have been for more than a year, I’m promptly denied coverage from private insurance companies.
• “We have determined that we are unable to offer coverage on a standard or modified basis in accordance with our underwriting guidelines. This decision was based upon the following: Bipolar disorder.”
-Celtic Insurance Company
• “During the underwriting process we reviewed your information. As a result of this review, we regret that you have been declined for coverage. This decision was based on fair and equitable risk selection practices and medical history listed on the application.”
-Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois

What makes this latest decision by BCBS-IL so unconscionable is, as I’ve stated above, BCBS-IL had been my health care provider for the past 6 and a half years while employed, and my health care covered 30 therapist visits and medication. But in the 8 months between January and August 2008, BCBS-IL had deemed me uninsurable due to what they now consider a “pre-existing condition.”

This brings me to the matter of real health care reform. Real reform means real choice. President Obama envisioned a health care reform package that will include the creation of a government-run health plan to compete with private carriers in the traditional market place. In short, this is how reform is designed to work: the exclusionary, driven by greed, overly bureaucratic, exceedingly inefficient for-profit insurance industry will have to compete against an all-inclusive, leaner, more cost effective government-run option. That’s real reform, that’s real choice. That’s the platform the President ran on. That’s the shared vision of the President and the millions of us who helped elect him to office.

For 18 years, the insurance industry has told me to “Drop dead.” Today, I have a message for them.

[angstlessk]

6. truly amazing..you are bi-polar and you COULD apply for disability

which would place you on medicare and have all your medical care paid for, but you chose, instead to remain a pillar of the community and continue to work, therefore you were penalized...that is the sad condition of american health care!...you are in the middle...er uh muddle of care...you are not sick enough to be disabled but too sick to get health care...something is amiss..and it ain't you!

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

7. Thanks!

:fistbump:


aside: my buddies were at the Hawks-Wings game today :Eeeeks!:

[emsimon33]

9. Problem is that we need single payer, not just a public option

I didn't realize this fully and was willing to settle for a public option until I watched the May 22 Bill Moyers Journal which I now urge everyone to do.

No bill, as one DUer put it, would be better than a bad bill.

Video of Bill Moyers Journal:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05222009/watch.html

Text of the May 22 program:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05222009/transcript4.html

Sampling:

BILL MOYERS: There aren't any details. But he seems to be advocating a public option that would compete with the private insurance-driven sector, as a way of lowering the cost. What do you think about it? Is that- am I reading his plan correctly?

DR. DAVID HIMMELSTEIN: Well, most of the cost savings he's talking about are really illusory, I think. And my research group has done most of the research work on administrative costs in health care. And the administrative costs he's talking about saving are a tiny fraction of the potential savings under single-payer. 'Cause hospitals have to keep their bureaucracy, if you're dealing with hundreds of different plans. And doctors have to keep the bureaucracy in our office. You don't actually get the streamlining that you get from having one payer that has one set of rules and can pay lump sum budgets to hospitals. But more than that, we're worried that the public plan actually becomes a dumping ground for the unprofitable patients. As it's happening in Medicare.

BILL MOYERS: What do you mean? How would that happen?

DR. DAVID HIMMELSTEIN: Well, the private insurers have all kinds of tricks to avoid sick patients, who are the expensive patients. So, you put your signup office on the second floor of a walkup building. And people who can't navigate stairs are the expensive people.

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

10. this part don't float

Single Payer is far superior. My "hope" ;) is that many other Americans already realize, or will come to realize, the cruelty and greed built into the current system and opt into the public plan.

But this part doesn't make any sense, especially since he added emphasis: "more than that."

But more than that, we're worried that the public plan actually becomes a dumping ground for the unprofitable patients.

lol

We are already there.

[Ocracoker16]

3. good job

[pinto]

4. Cool. Personal stories 'bring it home' for folks.

:thumbsup:

:thumbsup:

[eridani]

8. Share this with every other health care organization also

And your local newspapers, etc.