Health Insurance Coverage Quotes

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Fewer and fewer large and medium-sized companies offer their workers full health-care coverage—74 percent did in 1980, under 10 percent do today. As a result, health insurance premiums, co-payments, and deductibles are soaring.
Robert B. Reich (Beyond Outrage)
Cooperative Care in Wisconsin, which provides care to the elderly, was able to give its 81 members in 2004 relatively high pay, workers’ compensation, ten days’ paid vacation, and 50 to 75 percent health insurance coverage, all only three years after beginning operations.79 Similarly, Cooperative Home Care Associates in the Bronx, New York, founded in 1985, offers its 1700 members “significantly better pay and working conditions than most home health aides.”80
Chris Wright (Worker Cooperatives and Revolution: History and Possibilities in the United States)
A Harris/Harvard School of Public Health poll of 1989 showed that most Americans (61 percent) favored a Canadian-type health system, in which the government was the single payer to doctors and hospitals, bypassing the insurance companies, and offering universal medical coverage to everyone. Neither the Democratic nor the Republican party adopted that as its program, although both insisted they wanted to “reform” the health system.
Howard Zinn (A People's History of the United States)
Such trends lifted the overall well-being of many Kentuckians and particularly helped people who suffered from what are oddly called preexisting conditions like hepatitis C—oddly, in my opinion, because “preexisting” assumes that a person’s existence begins at the consummation of health insurance coverage.
Jonathan M. Metzl (Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland)
The value of land may be determined by how it can be used. For example, it may contain valuable resources such as water, minerals, tillable soil, timber or wildlife. There also may be commercial value in the natural attraction of land such as caves, lakes or trails. Land value can be reduced by erosion, flood, earthquake, fire or regulation.
Marshall Wilson Reavis III (Insurance: Concepts & Coverage: Property, Liability, Life, Health and Risk Management)
The only bill not overdue was for my health insurance. That’s because I don’t have any. Never have. Based on the figure the federal government claims is the average monthly cost of health coverage for someone like me who is self-employed, I’ve saved about $200,000 since opening Spirits in Clay. I
J. Michael Orenduff (The Pot Thief Who Studied Georgia O'Keeffe (A Pot Thief Mystery #7))
• Auto and Homeowner Insurance—Choose higher deductibles in order to save on premiums. With high liability limits, these are the best buys in the insurance world. • Life Insurance—Purchase twenty-year level term insurance equal to about ten times your income. Term insurance is cheap and the only way to go; never use life insurance as a place to save money. • Long-Term Disability—If you are thirty-two years old, you are twelve times more likely to become disabled than to die by age sixty-five. The best place to buy disability insurance is through work at a fraction of the cost. You can usually get coverage that equals from 50 to 70 percent of your income. • Health Insurance—The number one cause of bankruptcy today is medical bills; number two is credit cards. One way to control costs is to look for large deductibles to lower your premium. The HSA (Health Savings Account) is a great way to save on premiums. The high deductible creates a much lower premium, and this plan allows you to save for medical expenses in a tax-free savings account.
Dave Ramsey (The Total Money Makeover: Classic Edition: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness)
Take Canada again: why does Canada have the health-care program it does? Up until the mid-1960s, Canada and the United States had the same capitalist health service: extremely inefficient, tons of bureaucracy, huge administrative costs, millions of people with no insurance coverage―exactly what would be amplified in the United States by Clinton's proposals for "managed competition" [put forward in 1993].21 But in 1962 in Saskatchewan, where the N.D.P. is pretty strong and the unions are pretty strong, they managed to put through a kind of rational health-care program of the sort that every industrialized country in the world has by now, except the United States and South Africa. Well, when Saskatchewan first put through that program, the doctors and the insurance companies and the business community were all screaming―but it worked so well that pretty soon all the other Provinces wanted the same thing too, and within a couple years guaranteed health care had spread over the entire country. And that happened largely because of the New Democratic Party in Canada, which does provide a kind of cover and a framework within which popular organizations like unions, and then later things like the feminist movement, have been able to get together and do things.
Noam Chomsky (Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky)
In March 2002, the National Academy of Sciences, a private, nonprofit society of scholars, released a high-profile report documenting the unequivocal existence of racial bias in medical care, which many thought would mark a real turning point. Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care was so brutal and damning that it would seem impossible to turn away. The report, authored by a committee of mostly white medical educators, nurses, behavioral scientists, economists, health lawyers, sociologists, and policy experts, took an exhaustive plunge into more than 480 previous studies. Because of the knee-jerk tendency to assume that health disparities were the end result of differences in class, not race, they were careful to compare subjects with similar income and insurance coverage. The report found rampant, widespread racial bias, including that people of color were less likely to be given appropriate heart medications or to undergo bypass surgery or receive kidney dialysis or transplants. Several studies revealed significant racial differences in who receives appropriate cancer diagnostic tests and treatments, and people of color were also less likely to receive the most sophisticated treatments for HIV/AIDS. These inequities, the report concluded, contribute to higher death rates overall for Black people and other people of color and lower survival rates compared with whites suffering from comparable illnesses of similar severity.
Linda Villarosa (Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives (Pulitzer Prize Finalist))
If you're involved in a motorcycle accident, this can result in devastating injuries, permanent disability or perhaps put you on on-going dependency on healthcare care. In that case, it's prudent to make use of Los Angeles motorcycle accident attorneys to assist safeguard your legal rights if you are a victim of a motorcycle accident. How a san diego car accident attorney Aids An experienced attorney will help you, if you're an injured motorcycle rider or your family members in case of a fatal motorcycle accident. Hence, a motorcycle accident attorney assists you secure complete and commensurate compensation because of this of accident damages. In the event you go it alone, an insurance coverage company may possibly take benefit and that's why you'll need to have a legal ally by your side till the case is settled to your satisfaction. If well represented after a motorcycle collision, you may get compensation for: Present and future lost income: If just after motor cycle injury you cannot perform and earn as just before, you deserve compensation for lost income. This also applies for a loved ones that has a lost a bread-winner following a fatal motorcycle crash. Existing and future healthcare costs, rehabilitation and therapy: these consist of any health-related fees incurred because of this of the accident. Loss of capability to take pleasure in life, pain and mental anguish: a motorcycle crash can lessen your good quality of life if you cannot stroll, run, see, hear, drive, or ride any longer. That is why specialists in motor cycle injury law practice will help with correct evaluation of your predicament and exercise a commensurate compensation. As a result, usually do not hesitate to speak to Los Angeles motorcycle accident attorneys in case you are involved in a motor cycle accident. The professionals will help you file a case within a timely fashion also as expedite evaluation and compensation. This could also work in your favor if all parties involved agree to an out-of-court settlement, in which case you incur fewer costs.
Securing Legal Assist in a Motorcycle Accident
Today 60% of workers in the private sector receive their insurance through their employer. I believe that by 2025 fewer than 20% of workers at private companies will continue to receive their health insurance through an employer-sponsored program. Nevertheless many will still receive an employer contribution, a so-called defined contribution toward the purchase of health insurance in the exchange. I believe the majority of private-sector workers will get their coverage through the exchanges.
Ezekiel J. Emanuel (Reinventing American Health Care: How the Affordable Care Act will Improve our Terribly Complex, Blatantly Unjust, Outrageously Expensive, Grossly Inefficient, Error Prone System)
From a strategic perspective, however, the issues in health care can be divided into three broad areas. The first is the cost of and access to health insurance. The second is standards for coverage, or the types of care that should be covered by insurance versus being the responsibility of the individual. The third is the structure of health care delivery itself.
Michael E. Porter (Redefining Health Care: Creating Value-Based Competition on Results)
Global Insurance Travel Medical Coverage GeoBlueAffiliate Available for PrestigeCare Private Health Advisory Members GeoBlue Voyager Global Insurance for Single-Trip International Travel travel insurance Global insurance health coverage may be the last thought we have when planning a trip to another country. Most people do not even realize that while traveling, your current medical insurance can be useless in some countries or that your usual over-the-counter medications are prohibited in many locations. Protect Your Health Around the World. What is GeoBlue VoyagerSM? Short-term travel medical insurance for U.S. residents traveling abroad. Why Choose GeoBlue? Strength of a U.S. Insurer Underwritten by 4 Ever Life Insurance Company, rated A- (Excellent) by A.M. Best. 4 Ever Life is an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. Better Coverage: Our plans are U.S. licensed and feature coverage more generous than plans sold as “surplus coverage.” Our plans do not restrict illnesses or injuries resulting from a terrorist act. We do not impose precertification penalties for hospitalization. We provide coverage for pre-existing conditions for medical evacuation. Pre-existing conditions are also covered in all instances by our Choice plan. A Better Kind of Care: International travelers can leave home feeling confident that a trusted source of care is available at a moment’s notice - no matter what town, country or time zone, with global insurance. Travel anywhere knowing that if your health is a concern, getting good care is not. Global insurance coverage is available through PrestigeCare Private Health Advisory's affiliate partner, GeoBlue. You will have access to short-term global insurance health coverage options that best suit your needs while traveling. Just another way PrestigeCare Private Health Advisory looks out for all your health and wellness needs.* At PrestigeCare, we provide health solution services. *Up to $250,000 of coverage available through our affiliated partner for an unlimited number of trips of a maximum of 30 days in duration.
maranderson111
Global Insurance Travel Medical Coverage GeoBlueAffiliate Available for PrestigeCare Private Health Advisory Members GeoBlue Voyager Global Insurance for Single-Trip International Travel travel insurance Global insurance health coverage may be the last thought we have when planning a trip to another country. Most people do not even realize that while traveling, your current medical insurance can be useless in some countries or that your usual over-the-counter medications are prohibited in many locations. Protect Your Health Around the World. What is GeoBlue VoyagerSM? Short-term travel medical insurance for U.S. residents traveling abroad. Why Choose GeoBlue? Strength of a U.S. Insurer Underwritten by 4 Ever Life Insurance Company, rated A- (Excellent) by A.M. Best. 4 Ever Life is an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. Better Coverage: Our plans are U.S. licensed and feature coverage more generous than plans sold as “surplus coverage.” Our plans do not restrict illnesses or injuries resulting from a terrorist act. We do not impose precertification penalties for hospitalization. We provide coverage for pre-existing conditions for medical evacuation. Pre-existing conditions are also covered in all instances by our Choice plan. A Better Kind of Care: International travelers can leave home feeling confident that a trusted source of care is available at a moment’s notice - no matter what town, country or time zone, with global insurance. Travel anywhere knowing that if your health is a concern, getting good care is not. Global insurance coverage is available through PrestigeCare Private Health Advisory's affiliate partner, GeoBlue. You will have access to short-term global insurance health coverage options that best suit your needs while traveling. Just another way PrestigeCare Private Health Advisory looks out for all your health and wellness needs.* At PrestigeCare, we provide health solution services. *Up to $250,000 of coverage available through our affiliated partner for an unlimited number of trips of a maximum of 30 days in duration.
markanderson111
Luntz used polls, focus groups, and “instant response dial sessions” to perfect the language of health-care attacks and then tested the lines on average Americans in St. Louis, Missouri. Out of these sessions, Luntz compiled a seminal twenty-eight-page confidential memo in April warning that there was no groundswell of public opposition to Obama’s health-care plan at that point; in fact, there was a groundswell of public support. By far the most effective approach to turning the public against the program, Luntz advised, was to label it a “government takeover.” He wrote, “Takeovers are like coups. They both lead to dictators and a loss of freedom.” “I did create the phrase ‘government takeover’ of health care. And I believe it,” Luntz maintained, noting too that “it gave the Republicans the weapon they needed to defeat Obama in 2010.” But most experts found the pitch patently misleading because the Obama administration was proposing that Americans buy private health insurance from for-profit companies, not the government. In fact, progressives were incensed that rather than backing a “public option” for those who preferred a government insurance program, the Obama plan included a government mandate that individuals purchase health-care coverage, a conservative idea hatched by the Heritage Foundation to stave off nationalized health care. Luntz’s phrase was so false that it was chosen as “the Lie of the Year” by the nonpartisan fact-checking group PolitiFact. Yet while a rear guard of administration officials tried lamely to correct the record, Luntz’s deceptive message stuck, agitating increasingly fearful and angry voters, many of whom flocked to Tea Party protests.
Jane Mayer (Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right)
We need real health care reform. But it should expand competition and empower patients, and disempower government bureaucrats from getting between us and our doctors. We should allow people to purchase insurance across state lines (which is currently illegal), which will in turn create a fifty-state national marketplace for low-cost catastrophic coverage. If you want more coverage, you want more choices and lower costs. Obamacare gives us fewer choices and higher costs.
Ted Cruz (A Time for Truth: Reigniting the Promise of America)
She had moved to Los Angeles from the Midwest, lured by a job with a publisher. But the publisher was bought by another soon after, and she was left without a job. Turning to freelance writing, an erratic marketplace, she found herself either swamped with work or unable to pay her rent. She often had to ration phone calls, and for the first time was without health insurance. This lack of coverage was particularly distressing: she found herself catastrophizing about her health, sure every headache signaled a brain tumor, picturing herself in an accident whenever she had to drive somewhere. She often found herself lost in a long reverie of worry, a medley of distress. But, she said, she found her worries almost addictive. Borkovec
Daniel Goleman (Emotional Intelligence)
A small business owner from Port Clinton, OH, wrote, on September 19, 2013:   I strongly urge you to stand up for the middle class and small business and vote to DEFUND ObamaCare. As a small business owner, we have always offered health insurance. After meeting with our health insurance representative, we learned that the lowest coverage level of ObamaCare offered is estimated to be about $400 a person, twice what we pay now for excellent coverage. . . .  With big business and government being exempted from this policy, again the SMALL BUSINESS OWNER and individual are left with all the costs for everyone else. This could well end up closing our business and then there will be 15 more individuals collecting from the government.   A
Ted Cruz (TED CRUZ: FOR GOD AND COUNTRY: Ted Cruz on ISIS, ISIL, Terrorism, Immigration, Obamacare, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Republicans,)
For example, after a half-century of Johnson’s “Great Society” welfare programs, which have cost trillions of dollars, the national poverty rate remains roughly the same as it was in the 1960s.55 And despite countless promises by President Obama that his policies would make health coverage and college more affordable,56 health insurance costs and college expenses57 are significantly higher than they were when Obama implemented his reforms.
Glenn Beck (Arguing with Socialists)
From the start, Obama’s adversaries on the religious right—from officials of the Catholic Church to leaders of antichoice organizations to evangelical celebrities—portrayed Obamacare as a socialist takeover that would force taxpayers to pay for coverage of abortion services. That was not true, but it proved a potent talking point, priming the base for outrage when the Obama administration, in early 2012, finalized a regulation under the act requiring employer-sponsored health plans to cover contraception without a copay. Even after the Obama administration exempted houses of worship from the requirement and offered religious nonprofits an “accommodation” that permitted them to opt out by signing a form that would put the onus of coverage on their insurers, the regulation triggered a series of overheated, Republican-led congressional hearings, activist protests, and years of protracted litigation.
Sarah Posner (Unholy: How White Christian Nationalists Powered the Trump Presidency, and the Devastating Legacy They Left Behind)
Netherlands, which has a restrictive immigration policy compared to the United States. Most European nations, including the Netherlands, after all, have universal health insurance coverage, which makes drug treatment and psychiatric treatment more available, and the Dutch government subsidizes more housing. Finally, the Netherlands’ big success was with heroin, which has effective pharmacological substitutes, methadone and Suboxone, not with meth, which lacks anything similar. But there may be fewer obstacles than appear. The Netherlands has a private health-care insurance system similar to that of the United States and covered the people who needed health care in ways similar to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, which significantly expanded access to drug treatment, including medically assisted treatment, in the United States.4 San Francisco subsidizes a significant quantity of housing, as we have seen. While California is larger than the Netherlands, the population of Amsterdam (872,000) is nearly identical to San Francisco’s (882,000).5 And while California’s population and geographic area are larger and more difficult to manage than those of the Netherlands, California also has significantly greater wealth and resources, constituting in 2019 the fifth-largest economy in the world.6 And the approach to breaking up open drug scenes, treating addiction, and providing psychiatric care is fundamentally the same whether in five European cities, Philadelphia, New York, or Phoenix.
Michael Shellenberger (San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities)
Because the NHS budget covers everybody, the money saved on one patient can be used to treat another. Declining to operate on a sick grandmother means there is more money available to treat sick children. Accordingly, protests about denied coverage tend to be muted. In the U.S. system, that trade-off doesn’t apply; if an American insurance company refuses to pay $36,000 for Herceptin for one of its clients, the money saved is likely used to enhance profits.
T.R. Reid (The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care)
What American Healthcare Can Learn from Italy: Three Lessons It’s easy. First, learn to live like Italians. Eat their famous Mediterranean diet, drink alcohol regularly but in moderation, use feet instead of cars, stop packing pistols and dropping drugs. Second, flatten out the class structure. Shrink the gap between high and low incomes, raise pensions and minimum wages to subsistence level, fix the tax structure to favor the ninety-nine percent. And why not redistribute lifestyle too? Give working stiffs the same freedom to have kids (maternity leave), convalesce (sick leave), and relax (proper vacations) as the rich. Finally, give everybody access to health care. Not just insurance, but actual doctors, medications, and hospitals. As I write, the future of the Affordable Care Act is uncertain, but surely the country will not fall into the abyss that came before. Once they’ve had a taste of what it’s like not to be one heart attack away from bankruptcy, Americans won’t turn back the clock. Even what is lately being called Medicare for All, considered to be on the fringe left a decade ago and slammed as “socialized medicine,” is now supported by a majority of Americans, according to some polls. In practice, there’s little hope for Italian lessons one and two—the United States is making only baby steps toward improving its lifestyle, and its income inequality is worse every year. But the third lesson is more feasible. Like Italy, we can provide universal access to treatment and medications with minimal point-of-service payments and with prices kept down by government negotiation. Financial arrangements could be single-payer like Medicare or use private insurance companies as intermediaries like Switzerland, without copying the full Italian model of doctors on government salaries. Despite the death by a thousand cuts currently being inflicted on the Affordable Care Act, I am convinced that Americans will no longer stand for leaving vast numbers of the population uninsured, or denying medical coverage to people whose only sin is to be sick. The health care genie can’t be put back in the bottle.
Susan Levenstein (Dottoressa: An American Doctor in Rome)
To be clear, the beneficiaries of Truman’s universal coverage would have been overwhelmingly white, as white people at the time made up 90 percent of the U.S. population. Few Americans, Black or white, had private insurance plans, and the recent notion that employers would provide it had yet to solidify into a nationwide expectation. The pool of national health insurance would have been mainly for white Americans, but the threat of sharing it with even a small number of Black and brown Americans helped to doom the entire plan from the start.
Heather McGhee (The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together)
We are already seeing car insurance premiums linked to tracking devices in cars, and health insurance coverage that depends on people wearing a fitness tracking device. When surveillance is used to determine things that hold sway over important aspects of life, such as insurance coverage or employment, it starts to appear less benign. Moreover, data analysis can reveal surprisingly intrusive things: for example, the movement sensor in a smartwatch or fitness tracker can be used to work out what you are typing (for example, passwords) with fairly good accuracy [98]. And algorithms for analysis are only going to get better.
Martin Kleppmann (Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems)
What are your feelings from Bush to Obama? Besides being responsible for the death of half a million people, I feel like Bush dealt a huge economic and social blow to the USA, one from which we may never fully recover. He directly flushed 3 trillion dollars down the toilet on hopeless, pointlessly destructive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq …and they’re not even over! For years to come, we’ll be paying costs for all the injured veterans (over 50,000) and destabilizing three countries, because you have to look at the impact that the Afghan war has on Pakistan. Bush expanded the use of torture, and created a whole new layer of government bureaucracy (the “Department of Homeland Security”) to spy on Americans. He created Indefinite Detention (at Guantanamo and other US military bases) and expanded the use of executive-ordered assassinations using the new drone technology. On economic issues, his administration allowed corporations to run things and regulate themselves. The agency that was supposed to regulate oil drilling had lobbyist-paid prostitutes sleeping with employees while oil industry lobbyists basically ran the agency. Energy companies like Enron, and the country’s investment banks were deregulated at the end of the Clinton administration and Bush allowed them to run wild. Above all, he was incompetent and appointed some really stupid people to important positions at every level of government. Certainly, Obama has been involved in many of these same activities. A few he’s increased, such as the use of drone assassinations, but most of them he has at least tried to scale back. At the beginning of his first term, he tried to close the Guantanamo prison and have trials for many of the detainees in the United States but conservatives (including many Democrats) stirred up public resistance and blocked this from happening. He tried to get some kind of universal healthcare because over 50 million Americans don’t have health insurance. This is one of the leading causes of personal bankruptcies and foreclosures because someone gets sick in a family, loses their job, loses their health insurance (because American employers are source of most people’s healthcare) and they can’t pay their health bills or their mortgage. Or they use up all their money caring for a sick family member. So many people in the US wanted health insurance reform or single-payer, universal health care similar to what you have in the UK. Members of Obama’s own party (The Democrats) joined with Republicans to narrowly block “The public option” but they managed to pass a half-assed but not-unsubstantial reform of health insurance that would prevent insurers from denying you coverage when you’re sick or have a “preexisting condition.” The minute it was signed into law, Republicans sued in the courts (all the way to the supreme court) and fought, tooth and nail to block its implementation. Same thing with gun control, even as we’re one of the most violent industrial countries in the world. (Among industrial countries, our murder rate is second only to Russia). Obama has managed to withdraw troops from Iraq and Afghanistan over Republican opposition but, literally, everything he tries to do, they blast it in the media and fight it in Congress. So, while I have a lot of criticisms of Obama, he is many orders of magnitude less awful than Bush and many of the positive things he’s tried to do have been blocked. That said, the Democratic and Republican parties agree on more things than they disagree. Both signed off on the Afghan and Iraq wars. Both signed off on deregulation of banks, of derivatives, of mortgage regulations and of the energy and telecom business …and we’ve been living with the consequences ever since. I’m guessing it’s the same thing with Labor and Conservatives in the UK. Labor or Democrats will SAY they stand for certain “progressive” things but they end up supporting the same old crap... (2014 interview with iamhiphop)
Andy Singer
the head of innovation of an international French insurance company. I was supporting a HealthTech start-up providing remote chats with GPs in South Asian emerging countries. As data is the new oil, the start-up was also capturing analytics in the process on key trends for main pathologies. Patients in those countries miss affordable access to medical consultations. Equally, insurance companies miss useful data of the healthcare market and the patient requirements. People in this part of the world cannot pay for yearly insurances with large coverage but they could afford some level of insurance addressing specific diseases, pregnancy or partial coverage for their children. Hence insurance companies are keen to better understand this population and tap into a huge market. As the win/win was obvious the founder of the start-up had engaged with several insurance companies in view of developing an open innovation program. I was following up the engagement bringing the professional experience of working with a major healthcare innovative company in the US. The conversation started very well with an innovation manager genuinely supportive of integrating start-up creativity in the enterprise. Knowing the corporate world, I was not surprised to uncover two obstacles:
Veronique Germaine Boudaud (Think Digital Ecosystems!: 9 Questions To Build The Future Of Your Business)
Obamacare’s first years have been fraught with failure, but its future looks even more bleak. Big premium increases are coming this year and next for people who purchased health insurance on the Obamacare exchanges. Millions of others with coverage outside the exchanges lost their previous policies and now are facing double-digit premium hikes. Many Americans say the new policies they are forced to buy don’t meet their needs—with excessive benefit requirements and impossibly high deductibles. Congress is continuing to try to evade the law and exempt itself from key provisions, and your privacy is still at risk. We at Judicial Watch will continue to hold the government to account over this unfair and unworkable health care law and pressure the new president and Congress elected in 2016 to come clean and level with the American people on its deficiencies.
Tom Fitton (Clean House: Exposing Our Government's Secrets and Lies)
In fact, progressives were incensed that rather than backing a “public option” for those who preferred a government insurance program, the Obama plan included a government mandate that individuals purchase health-care coverage, a conservative idea hatched by the Heritage Foundation to stave off nationalized health care.
Jane Mayer (Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right)
the case of Nelene Fox. Fox was from Temecula, California, and was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer in 1991, when she was thirty-eight years old. Surgery and conventional chemotherapy failed, and the cancer spread to her bone marrow. The disease was terminal. Doctors at the University of Southern California offered her a radical but seemingly promising new treatment—high-dose chemotherapy with bone marrow transplantation. To Fox, it was her one chance of cure. Her insurer, Health Net, denied her request for coverage of the costs, arguing that it was an experimental treatment whose benefits were unproven and that it was therefore excluded under the terms of her policy. The insurer pressed her to get a second opinion from an Independent medical center. Fox refused—who were they to tell her to get another opinion? Her life was at stake. Raising $212,000 through charitable donations, she paid the costs of therapy herself, but it was delayed. She died eight months after the treatment. Her husband sued Health Net for bad faith, breach of contract, intentional infliction of emotional damage, and punitive damages and won. The jury awarded her estate $89 million. The HMO executives were branded killers. Ten states enacted laws requiring insurers to pay for bone marrow transplantation for breast cancer. Never mind that Health Net was right. Research ultimately showed the treatment to have no benefit for breast cancer patients and to actually worsen their lives. But the jury verdict shook the American insurance industry. Raising questions about doctors’ and patients’ treatment decisions in terminal illness was judged political suicide.
Atul Gawande (Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End)
If you’re Black or brown, the value of your life is less than the fragile masculinity of a cop who wants to feel superior or a racist who wants you out of the way so they’re not forced to face someone they don’t understand. El valor de tu vida es lo que vale el segundo en que alguien aprieta el gatillo, el segundo en que alguien pone toda su ira en su mano y te clava un cuchillo. Not enough? Think harder. The value of your life is zilch to most people. That’s why they sell you food that will kill you. That’s why they put poison in the water and don’t care if you get cancer. That’s why they allow you to rely on our shitty health system and allow insurance companies to deny you coverage based on a ridiculously long list of preexisting conditions, one of which is probably being alive.
Gabino Iglesias (The Devil Takes You Home)