THE DAILY DOSE: TUESDAY, AUGUST 4, 2009

Daily Dose
For Immediate Release:
2009-08-04T00:00:00
Contact Info:
Katie Grant
Stephanie Lundberg
(202) 225 - 3130
Health Reform in the House

Fact of the Day

Insurance companies will use a range of reasons to limit health insurance on the individual market based on who wants to buy it, including prescription drug use, height and weight, age, gender, and occupation.
(Center for American Progress)

Health Resources

Under the Microscope

REPORT: Too Sick for Health Care: How Insurers Limit & Deny Care in the Individual Health Insurance Market
All of the roughly 170 million Americans with private health insurance share concerns about skyrocketing costs and shrinking benefits. But there are even greater challenges for the roughly one in four Americans who either purchase their insurance on the individual market or have considered doing so. The individual market is confusing, complex, and typically costs more for less coverage—if coverage is available at all. Conservatives claim that comprehensive health care reform will lead to government control and rationing of care. Yet private insurers already effectively limit and deny the health care that their policyholders can access, especially those who have to find coverage in the individual market.
[Center for American Progress, 7/20/2009]

STATE FACT SHEETS: The State of the Individual Insurance Market
[Center for American Progress, 7/20/2009]

Health Care Headlines

  • Anti-Reform Group Takes Credit For Helping Gin Up Town Hall Rallies
    Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, the operation that’s running a national campaign against a public health care option, is now publicly taking credit for helping gin up the sometimes-rowdy outbursts targeting House Dems at town hall meetings around the country, raising questions about their spontaneity.
    [The Plum Line, 8/4/2009]  Read a related article.
  • Inside The Tea Partiers Anti-Health Care Organizing Campaign
    These teabaggers disrupting congressional town halls is just a spontaneous groundswell of populist opposition to health care reform, right? Riiiight. [TalkingPointsMemo, 8/3/2009]  Read two opposition strategy memos.
  • Hopes for Bipartisan Health Care Deal Lie With Baucus; Reconciliation Still on the Table
    Pressure is increasing on Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus to strike a bipartisan deal on a health care overhaul, now that one top Senate Democrat has said that if Baucus’ negotiations fail, Democrats may turn to a fast-track procedure that would shut out Republicans.
    [CQ HealthBeat, 8/3/2009] Read a related article.
  • Recess Ads to Flow Freely
    Though medical groups are still under orders not to blast attack ads as they wait for a Senate Finance Committee health care reform bill, trade groups and corporate players are nonetheless ratcheting up their messages over the August recess. [Roll Call, 8/4/2009]
  • Weighty Choices, in Patients' Hands
    Diagnosed with breast cancer last year at 51, Mary Bianchi balked when her surgeon laid out an aggressive plan for treatment: a lumpectomy and removal of lymph nodes without first testing them to see if the cancer had spread. [Wall Street Journal, 8/4/2009]
    Read about shared decision-making proposals.
  • OPINON: Lifting a Burden of Worry
    By Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services
    As the political debate about how to pay for and pass health reform grows louder and more contentious, we shouldn't lose sight of the reason we're even having this conversation: We have a huge, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to improve the lives of all Americans, insured and uninsured alike.
    [Washington Post, 8/4/2009]