HCFAT Blog
Check Out
Health Care For All - Texas
Executives and shareholders of the five biggest for-profit health insurers, UnitedHealth Group Inc., WellPoint Inc., Aetna Inc., Humana Inc., and Cigna Corp., enjoyed combined profit of $12.2 billion in 2009, up 56% from the previous year.
Texans for a National Health Program
Texans Need Sustainable Health System
Christine Adams, Ph.D
01/31/2011
The new health care reform law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or PPACA, is under scrutiny by Congress just as some of the modest benefits are kicking in for Texans. PPACA, well intended but deeply flawed, will not lead to sustainable health care reform because it builds upon our outdated, employer-based for-profit health insurance system.
February 9. 2011
Why For-Profit Health Insurance Makes No Sense
James Fieseher, M.D.
Portsmouth Herald
Dr. Fieseher believes Americans just don't understand how our complicated health insurance-based system works. His humorous essay explains why for-profit health insurance is not a sensible or safe basis for our American health care system. Would you favor a "privatized" police force where you were only protected from some types of crime?
Feb. 23, 2011
Forbes online
"One Woman’s Journey of Courage: Maggie Kozel, MD and her decision to leave the medical profession"
By Lisa Quast
Read about why one physician decided to leave medicine
...My day became shaped more and more by what insurance companies paid for rather than what was best for my patients. It was demoralizing.
Feb. 28, 2011
NY Times, Letter to the Editor
"When health insurance isn't for sale"
by Jerry Frankel, MD, Houston, TX
The key phrase in Donna Dubinsky’s article (“Money Won’t Buy You Health Insurance”) is, “If we are not going to have universal coverage.” Any reform that doesn’t offer nonprofit,quality, affordable universal access is inferior and fraught with serious problems, not to mention the complexity and unfairness of for-profit insurance.
Posted April 28, 2011 by PNHP
"15 Executives Who Get Paid Millions to Deny You Health Care Coverage"
Created from Business insider, Wall St. Cheat Sheet,
March 20, 2010
Want to know what the for-profit health insurance CEOs make in annual compensation? Aetna's CEO, Ronald Williams, has the highest compensation coming in at 38.12 million. The lowest paid CEO was Herbert Fritch who earns just $800,000.00 each year. Is the CEO of your insurance company on the list? Find out here.
The New York Times invited dialogue on single-payer national health insurance as the solution to the health care crisis in response to a letter to the editor by Dr. Sam Metz, founder of "Mad As Hell Doctors." They received over 70 letters within a few days. Read Dr. Metz's original letter, and the subsequent letters that make up this dialogue published in the New York Times Sunday Review.
Read the entire dialogue here.
Additonally, newspaper editorial boards are endorsing single-payer as a solution to the health care crisis. Read editorials by the St. Louis-Post Dispatch, Cape Cod Times and the Charleston Gazette.
September 17, 2011
The Presbyterian Church (USA) has consistently called for fundamental reform of United States healthcare systems and in 2008 endorsed single-payer universal health care reform…"as the program that best responds to the moral imperative of the gospel.” On Sept. 17, 2011, the Mid-Kentucky Presbytery voted to send an overture to the General Assembly recommending that the Presbyterian Church divest from investments in for-profit health insurance companies. Read the statment setting forth the moral rationale for divestment.
September 20, 2011
Letter to the Editor, Houston Chronicle
"Health Care"
by Christine Adams
Regarding "Poverty level near 20-year-high" (Page A1, Wednesday), again, Texas has the dubious distinction of being No. 1 in the nation. The Census Bureau released 2010 data showing Texas has the highest rate of uninsured in the nation - just as it did in 2009. The rate of uninsured is lower than it otherwise would be thanks to government-run CHIP, which covers many Texas children.
March 26, 2011
Letter to the Editor, Houston Chronicle
"Critical Choice"
by Carolyn Heinz, HCFAT Treasurer
Carolyn Heinz makes a solid case for single-payer national health insurance in her letter to the editor.
January 05, 2012
Bloomerg
"Insurers Profit From Health Law They Spent Millions
to Fight"
By Sarah Frier
...Commercial business now accounts for less than half of the companies’ combined revenue for the first time in at least two decades, according to the study. That’s partly a result of the companies’ growing investments in plans that provide services to Medicare and Medicaid patients, the report said...
At the same time, quarterly revenue from Medicare, the $525 billion federal health program for the elderly and disabled, increased by one third, to $16.39 billion, for the four insurers that reported figures, the study shows. Medicaid revenue more than doubled to $4.11 billion.
Come to the Single-Payer National Strategy Conference in Houston, TX on Jan. 28th & 29th.
