Posted by news intern Jon Brock
As if there weren't enough examples showing why Congress needs to overhaul health insurance, here is another one: On November 29, a man walked into the Bartell Drugs on Broadway to get a prescription filled that was issued by Virginia Mason Hospital, according to' [...]
Think private health insurance is just fine? Here's a nice example of the rank inhumanity of our current system:
Health insurance giant Aetna is planning to force up to 650,000 clients to drop their coverage next year as it seeks to raise additional revenue to meet profit expectations.
In a third-quarter [...]
Sixty percent of Americans want Congress to create a government-run health insurance provider to compete with the private racket firms (voting begins in the Senate today)... but they don't think it's going to make difference in the quality of health care. Thomson Reuters released the results of a poll' [...]
From a Democratic senator, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, who wants to recreate what happened when the House of Representatives added the anti-abortion Stupak amendment to its health insurance reform bill:
"It's as identical to Stupak as it can be," Nelson told reporters on Tuesday.
As I wrote in The Stranger' [...]
The White House ordered the Office of Personnel Management—headed by a gay man—to ignore a judge's order to extend federal health insurance benefits to the partner of a lesbian court employee. Fierce! But, hey, the Obamas hired a gay man to decorate the White House for Christmas. So... [...]
If President Obama pronounced a blog post on health insurance reform to be a must-read, and then Rahm Emmanuel told senior White House staffers "not to come back" the next day if they hadn't read the post, would you make it your business to read the post' [...]
The group Gun Owners of America thinks so:
The special "wellness and prevention" programs (inserted by Section 1001 of the bill as part of a new Section 2717 in the Public Health Services Act) would allow the government to offer lower premiums to employers who bribe their employees to live [...]
The Kentucky census worker found hanging from a tree with the word “fed” scrawled on his chest staged his own death to look like a homicide so that his son could collect his life insurance, the authorities said Tuesday.
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After an event in the International District yesterday afternoon intended to highlight her efforts to take Washington's Basic Health plan national, Sen. Maria Cantwell sat down with a few local reporters to talk about the overall health insurance reform effort.
The house passed its reform bill on Nov. 7. [...]
Sentence of the day, from ABC News:
A Canadian woman on long-term sick leave for depression says she lost her benefits because her insurance agent found photos of her on Facebook in which she appeared to be having fun.
(Some of the problematic photos show the woman partying at Chippendales. The [...]
40 Kidnapped, At Least 21 Killed: Election violence in the Philippines.
Local Conservative Talk Radio Host's Illegal Workers: Being let go quietly to keep company from getting in trouble.
Getting Tattooed at the Altar: Evangelicals in Mill Creek.
Insurance Vs. Cash: Profile of a two-tier clinic.
No Bus Cuts: [...]
The Senate health care reform achieved the first of several critical milestones on the road to passage tonight: The bill achieved the 60 votes needed to move forward to debate:
At its core, the legislation would create insurance exchanges beginning in 2014 where individuals, most of them lower income [...]
On the eve of a big senate vote to open debate on health insurance reform, Washington Senator Patty Murray explains the stakes:
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[...]
This brings us to recent politics. There has been an explosion of debate surrounding Congress’s attempt to reform health care. Despite what some would say, free health care is not a right. I’m sorry, but you do not have the right to have your neighbor buy health insurance [...]
Rep. Dave Reichert, R-WA-08, is “just getting started” in his jihad against AARP. From The News-Tribune:
In e-mails to the office of Washington’s insurance commissioner, Reichert’s staff wanted to know if AARP needed to be regulated under state insurance laws. An official in the insurance commissioner’s office, Gayle Pasero, company [...]
Steve Benen at Political Animal gets right to the heart of inanity and hypocrisy of Republicans over abortion and health insurance (my emphasis):
As we talked about this morning, all the RNC has done here is opt out of abortion coverage for RNC employees. [...]
But more important is the [...]
The Republican National Committee’s health insurance plan covers elective abortion—a procedure the party’s own platform calls “a fundamental assault on innocent human life.” Federal Election Commission Records show the RNC purchases its insurance from Cigna. Two sales agents for the company said that the RNC’s policy covers elective abortion.
Informed [...]
"New claims for unemployment insurance fell more than expected last week, evidence the job market is slowly healing as the economy recovers.
Still, many private economists and Federal Reserve officials worry the nation could be in for a “jobless recovery” as the unemployment rate rises despite some overall economic growth.
The Labor" [...]
Now that the House has passed its landmark health insurance reform bill, the big question is how long it will take for the Senate to act.
At the moment, it sounds like that chamber will get to work next Tuesday—provided the Senate Democrats can hold themselves together on procedural [...]
