They get it. I’m really proud of them for having such a professional-looking effort put together to go with the results. Those numbers won’t surprise you, Good Reader, but they do make for probing questions for candidates, don’t they? please, don’t tell me whom the unions have endorsed; I honestly don’t know and it has nothing to do with this post. Thank you. And for in discussions with neighbors and coworkers, as we all think about what we are going to do to solve this problem. It’s rather clear it’s going to take the clown squad in the Village a long time just to get on the same page as the rest of us.

Does anyone have any experience with, gosh, I don’t even know if they exist, but I’m thinking of small scale “health care collectives?” The New Depression won’t be like the other one; doctors are too harrassed these days to fall back into the house-calling, country gentleman model. So how do small units of people find ways to work together to improve the quality of the health care they receive? Pressure local governments? Business cooperation? Buying hospitals? Help me out here.

Via Atrios: Health Net ordered to pay $9 million after canceling cancer patient’s policy

One of California’s largest for-profit insurers stopped a controversial practice of canceling sick policyholders Friday after a judge ordered Health Net Inc. to pay more than $9 million to a breast cancer patient it dropped in the middle of chemotherapy.

The ruling by a private arbitration judge was the first of its kind and the most powerful rebuke to the state’s major insurers whose cancellation practices are under fire from the courts, state regulators and elected officials.  Read more 

Doctors and dollars

Typically, reimbursement rates for out-of-network physicians are based on what is generally accepted as the “reasonable and customary” rates charged by doctors in a a common geographic area. But who determines what is reasonable and customary? The attorney general’s staff is focusing on a company known as Ingenix, which collects data that are used by health insurance companies to determine what is charged in a particular region and how much a company will reimburse out-of-network physicians, based on prevailing rates in that area.  Read more 

Here is what to expect from plans like these and other plans in which insurance companies are kept in the overall equation. Higher costs, the poor getting really screwed, and people still being forced to make impossible choices. Unlike some, I’m happy to be in the front of the line “pushing insurance companies into the sea.” I worked for one, and the physicians in my family deal with them daily. They Are Evil. So long as we continue to worry about all those poor, sad little insurance company execs not making enough money by denying children with rare cancers life saving treatment because it’s “experiemental,” we won’t have a solution.  Read more 

Digby. When is it going to be enough? Will it take 100 million Americans watching 50 million needlessly suffering mothers living in their children’s basements, eating cat food and drinking themselves through the pain because they can’t afford drugs? Sure seems like it. I’ve made a lot of lists in my time, of what progressive should do, of what should be a priority for Democrats, etc. But seriously: fixing the health care mess in this country feels more and more like a “revolutionary” situation to me every day. Everyone gets sick, eventually. Everyone ages. Everyone dies. Even in a culture of massive desensitization, one which worships bloodshed and violence, people still don’t like watching loved ones suffer needlessly. I don’t know Jane personally, but I know many like her. Again I can only ask: who will be the smart, completely safe for two terms Democratic presidential candidate who wants to ride this wave? Runway models and cheerleaders aren’t as popular as that person would be.