CNN has just reported that Norm Coleman has conceded to Al Franken. Democrats now have a 60 seat senate. They must be held accountable for the agenda. No more excuses.

This is a must read from an ex insurance professional. It is an extensive article so please click the link below to read the entire interview. It is enlightening.

Excluded Voices

An interview with Wendell Potter

By Trudy Lieberman

This past year’s health discussion has been remarkable for the narrow range of ideas and opinions that have floated down to the man on the street. Journalists have sought out the same organizations and sources for their stories, offering up what has become the conventional wisdom for reform. To bring more voices into the conversation, our Excluded Voices series will intermittently feature health care experts who aren’t on the media’s A-list of sources. This is the sixth entry in the series, which is archived here. We want to offer journalists more options for their stories and encourage a deeper conversation. To that end, we’ve asked the experts featured in each post to respond to questions from Campaign Desk readers.

Historically, insurance companies haven’t topped reporters’ story idea lists. Boring, editors say. Complicated, reporters think. Of course, that’s all good for the insurers—especially health insurers that would just as soon not have snooping reporters scrutinizing their practices. As someone who has spent nearly an entire career covering insurance, I can tell you the subject is neither boring nor complicated once you delve into it. More reporters should do so if they want to explain what the various bills winding their way through Congress will mean for the public as well as for insurance companies.

One reporter who has made something of a specialty of covering insurance is Lisa Girion of the Los Angeles Times. Last week, Girion covered the testimony insurance executives gave before the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, and offered readers some insight into industry-think. The executives told Congress that they would continue to rescind coverage for people who unintentionally fail to disclose what insurers consider preexisting conditions when applying for health insurance. UnitedHealth Group, WellPoint, and Assurant Inc. have cancelled some 20,000 policies, leaving policyholders stuck with medical bills. Sometimes, companies cite even the flimsiest evidence of deceit in order to justify rescinding their coverage. And sometimes they’ve paid bonuses to staffers who help purge their books of policyholders likely to file expensive claims.
Campaign Desk sat down with Wendell Potter, a former head of corporate communications for CIGNA, the country’s fourth-largest insurer, and now a senior fellow on health care at the Center for Media and Democracy. Potter, who also spent four years at Humana, left the industry in 2008 after nearly twenty years of promoting its messages.

Trudy Lieberman: Why did you leave CIGNA?

Wendell Potter: I didn’t want to be part of another health insurance industry effort to shape reform that would benefit the industry at the expense of the public.

TL: Was there anything in particular that turned you against the industry?

WP: A couple of years ago I was in Tennessee and saw an ad for a health expedition in the nearby town of Wise, Virginia. Out of curiosity I went and was overwhelmed by what I saw. Hundreds of people were standing in line to get free medical care in animal stalls. Some had camped out the night before in the rain. It was like being in a different country. It moved me to tears. Shortly afterward I was flying in a corporate jet and realized someone’s insurance premiums were paying for me to fly that way. I knew it wasn’t long before I had to leave the industry. It was like my road to Damascus.

TL: What was so upsetting about the industry that pushed you over the edge?

WP: I was in a unique position to know how companies made money—what they had to do to satisfy shareholders—and how the industry has been able to kill reform in the past. I had been part of those efforts and didn’t want to be part of them again.

TL: How did you spin the press to the industry’s way of thinking?

WP: Over the years I developed relationships with key reporters. When you do that, you are in a much better position to influence the tone and content of stories reporters write, or at least be sure that your company’s key messages are included. It’s similar to the way special interests woo members of Congress. It’s not just money; it’s relationships.

TL: Did you ever deliberately mislead the press?

WP: I would say yes, if you mean not disclosing some pertinent information at times. PR people are always making selective disclosures of information. That’s what you do. I did not knowingly provide inaccurate information.

TL: How do reporters know what’s missing?

WP: They don’t. That’s why it’s really important to know what you’re covering.

TL: Can you give an example?

WP: Most large insurers are marketing consumer-directed plans. They do research and use selective data to persuade the public that these plans are popular and work as the companies say they do. There’s a lot at stake for these companies. They are building their business models around these plans, so they need to make them succeed. They need to counter research by others that shows many people don’t get the care they need because of the high deductibles that must be met.

Click Here To Continue

Excluded Voices : CJR

Additional Reporting By Sahil Kapur

When does an embattled Republican suddenly become an embattled Democrat? When Fox News is covering him, of course.

The network known for its conservative leaning ran footage of Mark Sanford admitting to an extramarital affair on Wednesday with a Chyron identifying the South Carolina Republican -- near tears -- as a D, for Democrat.

Media Matters has the screen grab on its site and notes that Fox News later changed Sanford's party affiliation to Republican.

But it's also worth adding that this is not the first time the network has misidentified a GOPer in the midst of acknowledging misconduct. When former congressman Mark Foley admitted to having problems with alcoholism -- after reports that he had behaved inappropriately with congressional pages -- Fox News also identified him as a Democrat.

There is, of course, a small danger to these quick journalistic missteps. They get repeated. Look, for instance at this Google News finding for "Mark Foley, D-Florida."

Fox News Identifies Sanford As A Democrat

By Alison Victoria

The issue of healthcare reform is a matter of life and death.  It is vitally important for every American, whether insured or not.—too important for us to allow the conversation to be muddied up by myths, lies and scare tactics.

For 15 years, I was a “gatekeeper” for a large organ transplant program in the U.S.  Gate-keeping is a heart-wrenching job.  I saw firsthand what the abstract economic expression “market-driven healthcare” means in human terms.  The “wallet biopsy” is a normal part of any admission to the hospital—almost any hospital procedure must be pre-authorized by the insurance company or patients will be asked to pay at the door.

My staff and I did everything possible to push the gate open as widely as possible.  We battled with insurance companies when procedures were unfairly denied, and we were often successful.  We also tried hard to find resources for the uninsured, but those resources are few and far between.  Too often we had heart-breaking meetings with patients and their families to explain, knowing that a transplant was their only chance, that the operation would not be possible—because of the money.  This conversation happens every day all across America.

Too many Americans think that the uninsured must be unemployed, perhaps lazy and indigent.  But the truth is that the vast majority of the uninsured are working people or are recently disabled. It can happen to any of us at any time, with just a little bad luck.

These are the facts:
•    About 47 million Americans are without insurance (15.8%) and the number has risen in recent years.  8.7 million of these are children.  (2006 U.S. Census)
•    At least 18,000 people every year die simply because they are uninsured and don’t get the medical care they need.  That’s 50 people every day. (Institute of Medicine Survey 2002)

My job was a tragic study in who is uninsured and why—a sad picture of the enormous holes in the safety net of the American Healthcare system.

Taxpayers already pay for many services for the uninsured.  However, we do so in a haphazard and disorganized way through the occasional County Hospital, unreimbursed medical care passed on to paying patients, crowded emergency rooms forced into giving routine care,  hit-and-miss Medicaid programs and lost productivity .  Expanding coverage for the uninsured and doing so in a more organized fashion is not socialism—it’s just good sense.  And it is consistent with the best of American values.

LINKS

Healthcare facts
http://www.nchc.org/facts/cost.shtml

http://www.pbs.org/healthcarecrisis/uninsured.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE54Q63B20090528

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2008/january/make_that_22000_uni.php

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090610_why_so_scared_of_a_public_plan/

Every so often I find we need to lighten up a bit on political issues. ENJOY!

The Conservative Values police gets caught again! 

By MANU RAJU & ALEXANDER BURNS | 6/16/09 5:47 PM EDT

Updated: 6/16/09 8:26 PM EDT

Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) acknowledged Tuesday that he had “violated the vows” of marriage by having an affair with a campaign staffer.

The admission — made in a televised appearance in Las Vegas — shocked Ensign’s Senate colleagues and delivered a serious blow to any hopes he might have had of seeking the GOP presidential nomination in 2012.

Political insiders in the Senate and in Nevada told POLITICO that Ensign began the affair with the staffer several months after he separated from his wife, Darlene. When Ensign reconciled with his wife, the sources said, he gave the aide a severance package, and the two parted ways.

Some time later, a Nevada source said, Ensign met with the husband of the woman involved and had what this source described as a positive encounter. Sources said that the man subsequently asked Ensign for a substantial sum of money — at which point Ensign decided to make the affair public.

Ensign did not provide specifics about the affair Tuesday, nor did he identify the woman involved, except to say that she and her husband “were close friends, and both of them worked for me.”

“Last year, I had an affair,” Ensign said. “I violated the vows of my marriage. It is the worst thing I have ever done in my life. If there was ever anything in my life that I could take back, this would be it. I take full responsibility for my actions.”

Nevada Sen. John Ensign admits affair; sources say blackmail involved - Manu Raju and Alexander Burns - POLITICO.com

As an American living in France I speak about government health care based on experience.

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) said on Tuesday that she is opposed to the creation of a public health care plan patients could opt into that would compete with private insurance.

"No, I'm not open to it. I'm not open to a public option," said Landrieu. "However, I will remain open to a compromise, a full compromise. Public option is not something that I support. I don't think it's the right way to go."

Landrieu is a key swing-voting "centrist" Democrat. Her vote may be less valuable, however, if Democrats decide to move health care reform through the Senate using the reconciliation process, which requires only a majority vote.

In May, Landrieu told the Huffington Post she was leaning against the public option but still considering it. "I am actually not sure," she said at the time. "I don't think I am [for it], but I told the folks that are promoting it that I would talk with them, but I am an original cosponsor of the Wyden-Bennett bipartisan proposal -- the only bipartisan proposal that I know of. And so I'm going to stay focused on that as a core, but I'm not going to shut the door on anything right now."

We elected Democrats this year in order to get progressive policies that serves us all. We elected them because we assumed that it was the Republicans that were in the pocket of the health insurance companies. Now the insurance companies are buying the Democrats we elected. It is time for us to make a list of the Democrats that are living up to the Republican’s expectation and begin working on candidates to oppose them in the primaries. A list will be posted shortly with Democrats targeted for defeat during their next respective election.

Mary Landrieu Opposed To Public Health Care Option

Tell President Obama that we elected him to bring change that included affordable healthcare for all. Do not cave in to the insurance companies.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor is an excellent choice for Supreme Court Justice. She fulfilled all the requirements President Obama and most Americans wanted in one package.