There's a ton of activity this week around health care reform, and more news is breaking every hour. Today, alone, we learned the Rep. Dennis Kucinich will now vote "YES" on the forthcoming House health care bill, that Republicans are now launching an effort to repeal the bill - before it's even been introduced! - and that only 3% of progressives are against passing the Senate health bill.
In addition to breaking news, the Washington Post recently launched a tool for tracking health care votes. You can use it to see where your U.S. Representative in Congress currently stands on reform, how much they've received from the insurance industry, and how many people without health insurance live in their district. Check it out here.
Oh, but there's more. The House Energy & Commerce Committee just released district-by-district reports on health insurance reform (that's 435 reports!). The fact sheets provide district-level analysis of the impact of health care legislation. It's a great tool for lobbying your member of Congress, and learning more about how this bill will affect your community.
At the end of the day, it might be a story from outside the beltway that's having the biggest impact in Washington. Reuters reported today that an insurance company specifically targeted people with HIV to drop their coverage. One lawsuit helped expose a secret process by Fortis to remove people from their rolls. From Reuters:
Previously undisclosed records from Mitchell's case reveal that Fortis had a company policy of targeting policyholders with HIV. A computer program and algorithm targeted every policyholder recently diagnosed with HIV for an automatic fraud investigation, as the company searched for any pretext to revoke their policy. As was the case with Mitchell, their insurance policies often were canceled on erroneous information, the flimsiest of evidence, or for no good reason at all, according to the court documents and interviews with state and federal investigators.
We've heard of insurance company abuse for several months now--ranging from requiring sterilization of women who've had c-sections, to declaring acne a "pre-existing condition." But while this latest example is one of many, it brings home the need for this change in the starkest of terms. The judge in the Fortis case summed it up this way:
"The court finds that Fortis wrongfully elevated its concerns for maximizing profits over the rights and interest of its customer."
The story of Fortis and the people whose lives were lost reminds us that, while we grapple with the political inertia in Washington, what we're fighting for is our lives.
We're fighting for the freedom to choose our health care, to receive it at affordable costs, and to have control over the treatment we receive. So let's win this one, okay? It's too important to let up now.
