AmericanHealthPlan.org

The Los Angeles Times report today—about patients getting caught in the middle when doctors and insurers fight over who should pay medical bills—raises some interesting issues that we have been talking about for years about lack of competition in the health care "market" and corresponding inefficiency and high costs.  Case in point:

* 20 years ago 10...

A new survey out of Massachusetts questions whether the newly insured under that state’s mandatory health insurance law are really protected.

According to a new poll, the cost of health coverage is still a major concern for patients:

Some are postponing treatments, and others are not filling prescriptions,...

Play the game and fight back against the HMO lobbyists and bureaucrats.  Use your mouse and space bar to protect the patient from the black-hatted insurance company minions.  Read about Nurse Avenger.

Play "Nurse Avenger," a first-person shooter game that allows you to stick it to the black-hatted minions of the health insurance industry.  At each level, you receive a new “tool”–weapons against insurance company waste and denials of care.  These are the tools that government should be using to make health care more affordable and accessible.
 
Level 1 - Special Weapon: Waste Whacker. HMOs and health...

A key component of the American Health Plan is that all Americans, regardless of age, should have access to a pubic insurance pool that bypasses insurers and pays doctors and hospitals directly.  Everyone would have their choice of sticking with their existing insurance, if they have coverage, or joining the public pool.   For those that opted for the public pool the only thing that would change is the price: the American Health Plan provides a choice of doctors and...

Need a break from steep health care rates and insurance companies' excuses for not providing coverage when you get sick?  Take a look at this animation by our friends at Consumer Watchdog. (Music and lyrics by the Austin Lounge Lizards).

 

The X Prize Foundation, the folks who awarded millions for the first private space flight and would give $10 million for a commercial 100-mpg car,  announced today that its next big prize will be aimed at health care. And the designer of the prize qualifications will be... WellPoint, the for-profit parent of Blue Cross, a corporation that has done so much to make health insurance in America unaffordable and often unavailable. Do you want WellPoint designing its own ideal for "efficient" health care? No? Then read on and click the link below to tell X Prize what you think of the idea, or propose a better one.

It's no surprise that a new report by the Economic Policy Institute shows that Americans continue to lose employer-provided health care. It's down from 68.3% of all U.S. residents in 2000 to 62.9% in 2007, with government-subsidized care, not private insurance, picking up most of the loss. But deep into the report, the Sacramento Bee's Dan Walters discovered that California, ever the U.S. trendsetter, is even worse off:

AmericanHealthPlan.org is dedicated to providing high quality and affordable health care by giving all Americans an option to buy into Medicare regardless of age.
 
Insurance companies argue, like banks have for a decade, that government oversight is unnecessary and that the industry is "more efficient" with less regulation.  The turmoil on Wall Street has made it abundantly clear that corporations cannot be counted upon to self regulate and that...

When the U.S. financial bailout package was first being debated in Congress, Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas denounced it as a "slippery slope to socialism." Today, the federal Treasury is going so far as to buy a public stake in some banks, which is at least a partial nationalization. The White House is cooperating closely with European leaders on financial policy--something unthinkable by this White House as little as a month ago. The realization that free market failures won't be cured with even freer markets will also make a difference in the coming health reform debate.