Marc Stier at Large

It was two steps forward and one step back on health care reform yesterday. That’s why we need you to make a critical phone call to PA members of the Blue Dog Coalition-Congressmen Patrick Murphy, Tim Holden, Chris Carney, and Jason Altmire, this morning to ask him to reaffirm his support for a public health insurance option in the health care reform legislation being drafted in Congress? You can call toll free at 1-888-436-8427. Continue reading

The Pennsylvania chapter of Health Care for America Now released a new report today showing that consolidation in the private health insurance industry is creating skyrocketing premiums for both patients and employers. Pennsylvania’s two largest health insurers, Highmark and Independence Blue Cross control 72 percent of the market statewide. When looked at a local level, however, the situation is even worse, with three out of four local market ratings being dominated by a single company. From the point of view of the regional insurance markets, Pennsylvania has levels of concentration exceeded by only twelve states. This kind of consolidation means that an insurer can, without fear of consequences, raise premiums and/or reduce the variety of plans or quality of services offered to customers. This is what we have seen: from 2000 to 2007, premiums in Pennsylvania had risen 86 percent compared to a meager 13 percent increase in wages. This… Continue reading

Health Care For American Now (HCAN) is holding a national Rally and Lobby Day—we’re calling it called Health Care ’09: We Can’t Wait—on June 25th on the mall in Washington. We hope to bring 1000-1500 Pennsylvanians to Washington for the rally. Free buses will be leaving from locations around the state. (I’ll be announcing those locations in a day or so.) The rally will be at 11:00. Then we will gather in one very large room for a Town Hall meeting at which we expect to see a number of our members of Congress. We will head by to Pennsylvania at about 6:00 pm. You can pre-register for the event at http://www.hcanpa.org/dc. Let me tell you why you should join us: Continue reading

May 28, 2009 The Morning Call – Freelance Everyone cares which side Sen. Arlen Specter is on and what difference it makes. In Washington, the focus is more often on his party. Here in Pennsylvania, however, the critical question is where Sen. Specter stands in the struggle to reform health care. Last week we got a little better idea when Sen. Specter signed a letter supporting many of the goals of Health Care for America Now (HCAN). Health Care for America Now is the largest organization working for health care reform in the country and one of the largest issue movements in American history. Continue reading

One of the bizarro aspects of being an issue activist is that you wind up in a bubble and sometimes forget that most people, most of the time, aren’t paying attention to the issue that consumes your life day in and day out. Given that the primary goal of a political activist is to find people who care about an issue and motivate them to become active in one way or another, you would think that it would be hard to forget that most people live outside the bubble. But activists spend time a lot of time with other activists, both professional and amateur, and with politicians and their staff members, and with members of the media. And we are all inside the bubble. If you are reading this, you at least stick you head inside the bubble once in a while. And from time to time, you take action… Continue reading

Independence Blue Cross (IBC) has filed for a rate increase of up to 52% for the three insurance programs it offers to individuals in what the industry calls the “non-group market.” These shocking increases point to the urgency of creating a public health insurance plan to compete with private insurance. Senator Specter is inching toward support of such a plan. Click here to call him in support of a public health insurance plan. Lance Haver and I did a press conference about these rate increases yesterday. You can see an excerpt at http://tinyurl.com/obr7ns. Continue reading

It was two steps forward and one step back on health care reform yesterday. That’s why we need you to make a critical phone call to Congressman Patrick Murphy this morning to ask him to reaffirm his support for a public health insurance option in the health care reform legislation being drafted in Congress? You can call toll free at 1-888-436-8427. Yesterday, in a letter to Senators Kennedy and Baucus President Obama reaffirmed his support for giving all Americans “the choice of a public health insurance option operating alongside private plans.” “This will give them,” he wrote, “a better range of choices, make the health care market more competitive, and keep insurance companies honest.” But the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of 51 House Democrats that includes Representative Murphy, said yesterday that the public health insurance plan should only come into effect if it is “triggered” by a failure of… Continue reading