I agree that health insurance companies suck. In my case, my insurer has seemingly arbitrary rules about what is and is not covered. For example, coverage is provided for a PAP test but not the doctor appointment necessary to obtain the swab sample. Coverage is provided for a colonoscopy, but not for the pre-visit where the gastroenterologist takes your current medical history so she knows if there is anything specific to look for. I do not think any doctor would not expect to have such a pre-visit, and to refuse coverage is just one more way for the insurer to make money while limiting their service.

The Carolinaladywith fan may have to use the fan again...that IS a threat! Y'all: I know we love SuperCampaigner, BUT remember that it's mild mannered Mr. President who has to do the following: impress the rest of the world, be the Commander-in-chief, run the country, set policy, deal with the political weirdness and STILL maintain his cool. Just because he jumped into the phone booth on Labor Day, rolled up his sleeves and emerged as Supercampaigner for the election season, doesn't mean he can always be his alter ego. Don't go all Lois Lane on me!

Democrats seem to forget... "If both parties think the same... We don't need one of them" ... Of course we're going to vote... These crazy people on the right are too close to the prize... I am very proud of what we have accomplished... I am disappointed we did't go far enough... But that's politics!

Great piece on how the republicans plan to rid the country of social security. Keep doing those graphs. Maybe the country will finally wake up and smell the coffee.

CHECK THIS OUT: This is your social security check --- $789.

This is your check on "PRIVATIZE" --- $289.

My daughter, a recent college graduate, has a job with insurance coverage. Yea!  But she was denied for pre-existing conditions.    A co-worker has a son with an immune system disorder.  Through a series of treatments, he is stronger and healthier.  Now the insurance company is denying further treatments,  since he's better!!   Only because of the treatments!!

I have worked in the insurance industry for over 25 years and, at every opportunity, try to educate my clients on what a single payer system is and why it would work great in this country. We're the only modern country in the world that does not provide some form of health care (not "insurance", CARE) as a basic right of citizenship. Health insurance companies and the people who work for them are not inherently evil. What is evil and misguided is the notion that the capitalistic, for-profit model somehow works as well for health care as it does for, say, selling tires. It does not, and our country's health care/insurance mess stands as proof.

Pointing fingers at the opposing team will not win the game. We are not blind or stupid but we are all unhappy with the performance of a majority of politicians.Its time our leaders take a lesson from the past. In the eighties Reagan faced similar circumstances and instead of passing blame and using negative tones he encouraged the public and won votes for it. No one is happy with the state of the union and instead of feeding into that our commander in chief must bring us out of it! Try, Pres. and Vice Pres. to focus on our strengths and your remedies to our current situation with that unbelievable passion which won the election and the hearts of the United States of America.

I have been wondering for over 30 yrs why dems and liberals are so damn civil while campaigning. I remember the rallies of both parties as a child my parents took me to the Atlantic City Democratic Convention in 64 to shout LBJ for the USA and before that in 60 to see and hear Kennedy in a Phila suburb. Since 68 and delivering handbills for Hubert Humphrey I have seen almost every contender from each party campaign and with the exception in part of Howard Dean and Joe Biden Democrats have become less confrontational while their GOP counterparts unload at will. I saw George Wallace speak at rallies twice and the vitreol, racism and general feeling of ill will could not hold a candle to two of the Palin appearances I attended in Pa.. When McCain was on the bill crowds were less venomous but when it was a Palin show it was unbelievable. The lead up speakers called Obama everything but the N...... word, questioned his citizenship,his religion and even had Hank Williams Jr. say that Obama didn't like the national anthem. At all her rallies there were vicious posters depicting Obama as a Nazi and Arab a Mullah, in rifle cross hairs ect. and not once did Palin say a word about the stew of barely suppressed hatred and violence. These tactics are carried out throughout the nation by right wing extremists in every state while progressives argue policy and complain about the lack of debates. Maybe it's time to bring out hungry children and people with untreated diseases, supporating sores are always a winner. Show people the real tragedies of Reagan/Bush economics, bring out the Erin Brokovich clients the victims of racism, homophobic and religious extremism and trot them out at every stop.If this is what it takes to motivate an electorate do what it takes the stakes are too high to lose because of civility.

JKHayes

I hate how the opposition refer to the health care reform as socialism.

If "Spread the Health" is socialistic, then "Cut and Kill" is sociopathic!

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There is no doubt that the health care bill is an idea whose time has come. It has always been unconscionable how many people in this country have died because they could not get insurance to cover needed treatment.

I am one of the 18.5 million people who are “expendables” by the Democratic Party in order to make health care a reality for 30 million other potential voters. The bill poses a $2,000 penalty on employers who drop their active employees from health care forcing them on to the exchanges. No penalty is imposed should that same employer drop retirees from coverage. The bill also dropped the tax deduction given by Bush’s 2004 Prescription Drug Law to employers in order to encourage them to keep retirees on their employer sponsored drug plans. That will force 9.5 million such retirees on to the Part D plans by 2013, costing Medicare $5.4B not counted in the original bill by the CBO. That is $900M more than would be the anticipated savings of dropping the tax deduction to employers.

Even for active employees the $2,000 penalty means nothing when the cost of carrying health insurance for an employer ranges from $5,000 to $13,000 per year. Do the math. Employers will be getting out of the insurance business so fast they will leave skid marks. A.T.&T. has already projected a yearly savings of $1.8B by dropping coverage.

This is part of the anger against the health plan. I’ve written Rachel about this and never received an answer.

My mom has been very ill for a long time. She often loses her balance and falls down (usually breaking bones in the process.) Her insurance company refused to pay for her doctor visits. She is unable to work because she is sick. As a result of her illness she racked up an astonishing amount of medical bills. She paid off these bills (after being threatened by collection agencies) by mortgaging her house (the home my great-grandparents and grandparents lived in)

So...she's losing her house. None of this would have happened if we had universal healthcare in the US. The insurance companies have cost her pretty much every asset she had.

tl;dr

She was an RN. She got sick. She is losing her house. Give us @!$%#ing UHC. Our heathcare is killing us both physically and financially.

Good on ye DEMS!!!!!!! Keep it up! I think Dems have not aggressively campaigned because we feel that things that are good and make sense are inherently self eveident- that any rational people would see what is good for the country and make the right choice. But that is not happening AND , lets face it, this tea party is fully of not only unqualified people but people that are UNSTABLE, of questionable character, and really destructive in their intentions. For the first time in my life, I have actually thought about moving my kids to Ireland, where my grandparents and husband are from, if the tea party gets key positions. I really fear for where they will lead our country with their angry, bigotted ideas and their calls to their followers to take up arms, like that wacko Sharon Angle (SP?). Their perversion of the constitution would be too much- I would not want my kids raised under their form of government.

I am coming to the conclusion that a lot of the democrats may actually not want to win because they are themselves able to profit from the republican agenda. Since we now have more wealth concentrated in fewer hands than we have in the last 30 years and since most people in our government either are or serve at the whim of the wealthy, perhaps they find the republican agenda more appealing than the one that they espouse that purportedly helps the (vanishing) middle class. What say you?

I am in favor of the changes that Obama is making to our Health Care System. I do have a concern though. Most of us purchase insurance as a back up plan for when things go wrong (car accident, home damage, etc.) We get health insurance for the same reason. We pay into the system when we don't need it to be insured for when we're going to need it. Our payments go toward the money that the insurance company pays to those who are are in need of health care. If we allow people to purchase insurance only when they need it the insurance companies won't have the money to pay out. It will encourage people to not carry insurance when they don't have any health issues.

I am all for preventing the insurance companies from refusing coverage to those with pre-existing conditions but I also think we need to put a requirement in the bill to make carrying health insurance mandatory. If everyone was required to have health insurance they would be paying into the system to help pay for others who need it and to ensure that money is available if and when they need it.

We make carrying car insurance mandatory. This would be no different.

Better late than never.

I thought they are just keeping powder dry. If they want money to come in we need to see the press we elected and hear what they will do. People see signs of life might now get some energy to do more.

Get Will i am and the other young celebs out there.

I suspected there would be something happening by now. It is true, Meg Whitman in CA and some of those people with seemingly unlimited funds need to see that money on negative ads and vague buzz words is not an automatic win. Vote, read between the lines, the Repubs just want power back and extend the tax cuts that are responsible for the deficit they supposedly hate. The spending on the Middle East is responsible for budget deficit AND debt! Have we been attacked, YES. The money spent and revenue NOT collected is what they WANT. They want to scare people into voting for them. Boogeyman Obama, Boogeywoman Nancy Pelosi. OOOOHHHHHH scary!

What is this crap that Americans are so scared they must stop everything in THIS country to prop up elsewhere? Is that what we must accept, the wages too high here, so we must help other nations so they can buy our stuff, since Americans are jobless now?

Get used to it? Hell no, stop buying into tax cuts and spending. We have to spend money HERE to get our economy running again. We need to spend so people will hire more workers, so economy will get going.

Tax cuts 2001 unemployment around 4%. 2010 unemployment is around 10%. WHY does anyone think tax cuts for wealthier people will help create jobs? It is proven in the lat 10 years, NOT TRUE that tax cuts will create jobs here!

That's basically all the R's have, tax cuts, but deficit and debt, we have to stay in Middle East and hand over cash, so we have to cut Social Security?

WTF?

I used to laugh at the tea party, telling myself they were harmless ignorant, red necks. The media, seeing a juicy story, kept covering them and now they look unstoppable. A couple of days ago I finally woke up and started looking at different tea party races around the county and donating to every Democrat opposing them. I will continue this. Further I am going to a democratic fund raiser on Friday. We should all get active and make donations, even if small, to offset the millions being funneled into Republican by big business.

Democratic congressmen are afraid of their own shadow because they voted for healthcare. They will not even bring the middle tax cut to a vote. Republicans have them paralyzed. They should be taking the offensive. I actually hate to support such weaklings. However, I keep reminding myself to THINK OF THE ALTERNATIVE.

Rachael should highlight Democrats who have throw off their disappointments of the last two years and are finally fighting back. Maybe she can get the media storm rolling in the opposite direction.

The Democrats have no balls. They're cowering in the corner, trembling in fear of the teabaggers. I learned in junior high school that you must stand up to bullies. The Democrats, including Obama, haven't learned that lesson. They deserve to lose, and they will.

Hi Rachel!

First, you rock and I totally want to be you. I used to listen to you every morning on the River in Western MA. Valley pride!

Second, one aspect of the health care cost crisis that doesn't get enough air time is the role of large hospital chains. IMO, hospitals and doctors tend to get a free pass in the public discussion of this issue, when they are really responsible for a good deal of the spiraling costs.

In the 1990s, the FTC lost a lot of hospital merger cases b/c of a faulty method of market definition, which led to consolidation of hospital chains like Sutter in California. These chains have huge bargaining power in contract negotiations with insurers, and so they can demand higher prices than they'd receive in a perfectly competitive market. Furthermore, as these chains expand, costs increase due to overutilization of services. For example, if a hospital chain buys a new MRI machine, doctors have an incentive to order more MRIs for their patients in order to increase hospital revenue. (Shannon Brownlee's book "Overtreated" gives a great analysis of the overutilization problem.)

That is all. Keep on being awesome.

I keep hearing about Health Reform but I would like to inform those who are saying it's better than nothingbecause there are those of us who are caught in the middle. I myself am married and for over 16 months we have been fighting for diablility for my wife. i know those who recieve disability have fewer ailments than my wife but for some reason we have had to get an attorney which will recieve 25% of what she will recieve of which is another expense we can't afford. I'm retired and recieve a little over $2400 a month, out of which we pay $1200 a month on Health Care Insurance and our rent, utilities eat up what we have left. We have no transportation and can't afford even public transportation but we are lucky to have a neighbor who lends me his car to go to the food bank and the grocery store when we have a little money to buy food which usually consist of Bread, milk,eggs and butter. That is what we live on because the food bank will only allow us food 4 times a year. We don't qualify for any other assistance because my gross is over $2100 a month and they don't take into consideration that I'm trying to pay for our own Health Care. It's annoying when I go to the food bank and see those who qualify driving newCadillacs and SUV's. I wish the demoncrats would grow a pair and get of the dime. President Obama has the nerve to tell the base to buck up when in fact he should be telling the democratic party to buck up and get a spine. I am not alone in my circumstances, there are a lot of us who have worked all our lives and now we're older and it seems that we are unemployable because we're old. I watch MNSBC every week night from 4pm to 9pm and I know that you are all trying your best to get the message out but the truth is our elected officals have a good life and they really don't care about those who need help so long as they get re-elected. I have been a democrat all my life but I like millions are very disappointed with our elected officals who are whinning and hiding in the corner when their fellow Americans are losing the will to live. I'm only writing this post to inform you that there are those who are trying to survive by paying for their own Health Insurance but even that has become to expensive.