This morning a variety of single-payer healthcare advocacy organizations including
Progressive Democrats  of America, Healthcare Now, PNHP and All Unions Committee For Single Payer Health Care are petitioning MoveOn.

I've been asked to explain to Daily Kos readers what's happening and ask you to support single-payer healthcare in the United States by signing the petition to MoveOn.

Here's a link to the MoveOn petition we hope you will sign.

Do we really require additional verification or another study to further substantiate our national shame?

Well like it or not, here it is. This time from the august Annals of Internal Medicine.

Millions With Chronic Disease Get Little to No Treatment

Millions of Americans with chronic disease like diabetes or high blood pressure are not getting adequate treatment because they are among the nation’s growing ranks of uninsured.

A National Study of Chronic Disease Prevalence and Access to Care in Uninsured U.S. Adults (Annals of Internal Medicine)That is the central finding of a new study to be published Tuesday in the medical journal Annals of Internal Medicine.

http://www.nytimes.com/...

Where indeed is the shame?

Thirty-six year old, Christina Applegate has breast cancer and will undergo treatment.  She was apparently diagnosed with breast cancer during a regular MRI.  She also has family history of cancer; her own mother suffered from breast cancer and cervical cancer.

I felt so sorry for Christina after I read that news. I wondered if she had health insurance or if the insurance companies refused to cover her for cancer.  

After all, it was only a little more than a year ago that my daughter got dropped from our family insurance and other insurance companies created a 'trumped up' illness in an effort to refuse her coverage!

The odd thing was that the refusal really blindsided us.  

Today is the 45th anniversary of Medicare. Don't take Medicare for granted, there are forces in this country determined to destroy it.

Now glance at your mother or your aging father or your grandmother or grandfather and imagine a world without Medicare.

If you're lucky, you too will get old . . .

"I've seen people die because of co-payments and deductibles"

This is not idle chatter. This is real. This is a stunning and profound indictment of the U.S. healthcare system. These are the words of Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a doctor who treats patients every day.

Some of us less diplomatic than Dr. Woolhandler, call what she's describing, pay or die.

In June, Dr. Woolhandler, a Harvard Medical School physician and one of the great heroes of the single-payer movement in the United States, was invited to appear before The President's Council on Bioethics.

Cross posted on Guaranteed Healthcare

No wonder we call this guy, McSame. How about McEvenWorse?

I spent the morning reviewing some video clips of McSame's appearance at the Lance Armstrong Cancer Summit.

It's a treasure trove. The entire event should inspire fear in the hearts of all Americans. The one I selected shows just how absolutely clueless this man is.

It's a huge blooper, could be another senior moment, I don't know:

Things are not going well on the AHIP - America's Health Insurance Plans (we feel your pain) tour of our battered nation.

Karen Ignagni the CEO of the health insurance lobbyist AHIP was taped yesterday in Ohio.

Ms. Ignagni carefuly explained that profit is the guiding principle of AHIP, the for-profit insurance industry, and tragically, the entire U.S. healthcare system.  

She says, "no margin, no mission".

This is a bad day for AHIP, because their leader/CEO, Karen Ignagni, told the truth, probably for the first time in her life.

Isn't the first rule of politics, don't tell the truth? Well, she fumbled, badly.

Take a listen. I've provided a decent transcript of some of the tape.

Health Care For America Now and Public Service Administration bring you this satirical look at health insurance in America.

Hello from Netroots Nation in the Lone Star State, Austin Texas.

I'm sitting in the beautifully air conditioned lobby of the Austin Hilton.  The lobby here is a sea of bloggers and computers. There's free internet access and clusters of very comfortable arm chairs, so as you might imagine, we've turned it into one huge living room.

But despite all the noise and activity, lots of us are hard at work.

Here's the big news on the healthcare front.  I just received an email from Mike Dundas the chief health care deputy city attorney in Rocky Delgadillo's office. Mike wanted to let me know that Rocky's office (The Los Angeles City Attorney), has filed a lawsuit against Blue Shield of California as part of the ongoing investigation regarding retroactive recission of health insurance policies.

The insurance industry is celebrating today.

How could so many good people be so wrong?

Has MoveOn lost its mind?

It's been a while since I've seen Obama give a mention to his universal health care plan. Having read through the plan in its entirety on his website, I have to say that I wish it took into account the reality of why medical costs are so outrageously high. I am aware that an in-depth discussion of the details of the plan doesn't make for interesting sound-bytes and doesn't hold the interest of the American public the way patriotism, terrorism, and economic recovery plans do, but for millions of Americans forced to pay unnecessarily high drug costs, this hits U.S. consumers where it hurts the worst, in the pocketbook.

Cross posted on Guaranteed healthcare.

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is a part of the United States Bill of Rights that expressly prohibits the United States Congress from making laws "respecting an establishment of religion" (the Establishment Clause) or that prohibit free exercise of religion (the Free Exercise Clause), laws that infringe the freedom of speech, infringe the freedom of the press, limit the right to peaceably assemble, or limit the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Before I tell you about the crushing healthcare burdens destroying Americans of every socioeconomic level, I hope those of you too young to remember, will take a look at this video about how my generation changed the course of a nation.

Also posted on   Guaranteed Healthcare. Come to the new Guaranteed Healthcare blog and describe your healthcare and insurance horror stories.

So you're uninsured.

But like so many, you're hanging in because in a few years, you'll be eligible for Medicare.

Help has arrived.

Also posted on Guaranteed Healthcare.  

In an ocean of sobering reports on the collapse of the U.S. healthcare system, this just released report from  The Center for Studying Health System Change, is among the most horrifying I've seen.

I'm actually choking up as I write this.

Some of you know that last Thursday, June 19th was a nationwide day of action against the for-profit health insurance industry.

I was in San Francisco where AHIP was holding its annual convention.

I marched with the heroes from the California Nurses Association. CNA took the lead in organizing the protests nationwide.