SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
insurance industry
McConnell's Stumbles in Senate Spark Call for Medicare for All
"He won't have to worry about medical bills or skipping tests because he has high-quality, government-funded healthcare—the thing he's fought to deny the rest of us," said one single-payer campaigner.
Feb 05, 2025
U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell reportedly fell twice on Capitol Hill Wednesday, but as one healthcare advocate highlighted, the 82-year-old Kentucky Republican—who's called Medicare for All a "radical scheme" that "would be serious bad news for America's hospital industry"—won't struggle to get any needed treatment.
"Mitch McConnell fell again and is obviously not well," said Melanie D'Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health—which fights for universal, single-payer healthcare—on social media.
"But he won't have to worry about medical bills or skipping tests because he has high-quality, government-funded healthcare—the thing he's fought to deny the rest of us," D'Arrigo added. "We need Medicare for All."
Punchbowl News' John Bresnahan and Max Cohen reported Wednesday that McConnell fell while exiting the Senate chamber, then fell again while entering a Republican lunch.
A spokesperson for the former majority leader told Bresnahan—and various other journalists—that "Sen. McConnell is fine. The lingering effects of polio in his left leg will not disrupt his regular schedule of work."
McConnell contracted polio as a toddler in 1944, according toThe Associated Press. His leg was paralyzed, but after two years of treatment, he was ultimately able to walk without a brace.
After the senator's Wednesday falls, Bresnahan said that "McConnell is using a wheelchair as a precautionary measure, we're told."
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires members of Congress to obtain coverage via the D.C. Health Link Small Business Market, according to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the federal government's human resources agency. For lawmakers with Medicare, the federal health program for American seniors serves as a "secondary payer."
The federal government covers up to three-quarters of the premium for lawmakers' primary health plans, according to a Congressional Research Service report from 2017. Another CRS report from last June points out that "in addition, the Office of the Attending Physician provides emergency medical assistance for members of Congress, justices of the Supreme Court, staff, and visitors. Additional services are offered to members who choose to enroll for an annual fee ($650.00 in 2023)."
Meanwhile, tens of millions of Americans don't have adequate health plans or lack coverage altogether. Citing the U.S. Census Bureau, the Commonwealth Fund's November 2024 report on its biennial health insurance survey notes that "an estimated 26 million Americans, or 8% of the U.S. population, lacked health insurance in 2023," and although the United States is still behind countries with universal coverage, before the ACA, 49 million, or 16% of the population, didn't have any coverage.
The U.S.-based Commonwealth Fund found that "nearly a quarter of working-age adults have insurance that leaves them underinsured," and two-thirds of those individuals had coverage through an employer plan. The survey also shows that people who were uninsured or underinsured often did not fill prescriptions, get recommended care, or visit a needed doctor or specialist.
Another survey, released Tuesday by Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health and Gallup, highlights that healthcare access and affordability is a leading priority for the American public, and a majority wants the federal government to act.
"Americans ranked improving healthcare access and affordability as the highest public health priority for government leaders to address out of 15 options," states a report from the pollsters. "One in four in the U.S. selected this issue as their highest priority and more than half (52%) rated it as their first, second, or third priority."
"Majorities of both Republicans and Republican leaners, and Democrats and Democratic leaners, chose the federal government over state government as the more effective force for addressing each of the issues that emerged as a top priority for them," adds the report—which comes as the Trump administration and billionaire Elon Musk attack the federal government.
Despite public opinion polling, President Donald Trump and the Republican majorities in Congress—who have long tried to restrict or fully roll back the ACA—aren't expected to work to expand health coverage, particularly via progressive proposals like Medicare for All, which has been championed on Capitol Hill by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.).
Still, advocates of Medicare for All
continue to call for it. As Sanders said Monday on Musk-owned X: "The U.S. spends 2x more per capita on healthcare than any other nation. Yet 85 million are uninsured or underinsured, 68,000 die because they can't afford a doctor, and we pay the highest prices in the world for Rx drugs. Healthcare is a human right. We must pass Medicare for All."
Keep ReadingShow Less
State Farm Accused of Trying to 'Cash in on a Terrible Tragedy' With $740 Million 'Bailout'
The head of Consumer Watchdog argued the company is "detouring the rules that protect state consumers from insurance price gouging."
Feb 04, 2025
The insurance giant State Farm on Monday asked California state insurance regulators to approve an emergency interim rate hike of 22%, drawing pushback from the nonprofit Consumer Watchdog, which accused the company of not providing the financial data necessary to justify the increase.
"State Farm wants to fill its bank accounts on the backs of California homeowners, some of whose homes are in ashes," said Carmen Balber, Consumer Watchdog's executive director. "Insurance Commissioner [Ricardo] Lara must require State Farm to prove it needs this staggering increase."
Devastating wildfires ravaged the Los Angeles area starting in early January, compounding an already escalating insurance crisis in the state and causing between $35 to $45 billion in insured property losses, according to one estimate. The fires, which are now either out or fully contained, generated over 8,700 claims for State Farm General, the California homeowners insurance affiliate of the firm State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company. The compnay said it has paid over a billion to customers due to the blazes.
State Farm General is the largest insurance group in the state. The firm stopped writing any new policies in May 2023, and last spring the company announced it would not renew plans for tens of thousands of homeowners—though it has said it will renew policies for those impacted by the recent fires in Los Angeles County.
In a letter to the California Department of Insurance, leaders at State Farms General requested that the department take "emergency action to help protect California's fragile insurance market," by allowing interim rate increases of 22% for homeowners, 15% for renters, 15% for condo owners, and 38% for rental dwellings.
"State Farm General's rate filings raise serious questions about its financial condition," department spokesman Gabriel Sanchez said, according to the outlet Insurance Business.
Proposition 103, a measure passed in 1988 which sought to protect consumers from arbitrary insurance rate hikes, requires insurance companies to back up their rate applications with "comprehensive data," according to the California's insurance commissioner.
Consumer Watchdog said that State Farm General is asking for an increase on an interim basis, meaning "without having to prove that it needs that increase, or the impact higher premiums will have on the ability of consumers to afford coverage."
The letter from State Farm General to the department includes an "illustration of State Farm General financial deterioration" as an attachment.
According to Consumer Watchdog, the requested 22% hike on home insurance rates amounts to $740 million a year for the company. The group has called the request a "bailout."
The request comes after State Farm General last summer asked for a 30% rate increase for its homeowners, a 52% rate increase for renters, and a 36% rate increase for condominium owners. In December 2023 it was approved for a 20% increase for homeowners and condominium owners.
The insurance company is "trying to cash in on a terrible tragedy by detouring the rules that protect state consumers from insurance price gouging—at a time when those safeguards are more important than ever," said Balber.
Keep ReadingShow Less
RFK Jr Refuses to Say Healthcare Is a Human Right at Confirmation Hearing
"The problem is that Kennedy isn't 'anti-establishment' in any way that would actually help working-class people at the expense of wealthy plutocrats."
Jan 29, 2025
Anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Donald Trump's nominee to direct federal health policy, faced the U.S. Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday having made a name for himself as a public figure bent on "making America healthy again"—pushing anti-scientific warnings against seed oils, falsely claiming as recently as 2023 that "autism comes from vaccines," and pledging to protect Americans from harmful toxins.
But Kennedy's confirmation hearing to be the secretary of health and human services presented the latest evidence that the environmental lawyer and former presidential candidate has little if any concern about how the health of the country is impacted by one significant factor: the fact that Americans rely on a for-profit industry—empowered to deny coverage for lifesaving treatment on a whim—in order to obtain healthcare.
In his opening statement to the committee, Kennedy signaled a lack of interest in discussions about the finances involved in the U.S. healthcare system—one in which the top five health insurers have reported more than $371 billion in profits since the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010, while increasingly denying medical claims and charging families an average of $26,000 per year in premiums.
"I don't want to make this too much about money," said Kennedy, adding that "the nation has been locked in a divisive healthcare debate about who pays."
He dismissed debates about whether healthcare costs at the point of service should be paid by the government, corporations, providers, or families as "like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic" and turned his attention to "chemical additives in our food supply" and "chronic disease."
Ahead of the hearing, political commentator Ben Burgis wrote at MSNBC that while Kennedy has sold himself to the public as an anti-establishment figure, unafraid of standing up to Big Pharma by spreading conspiracy theories about vaccines, "the problem is that Kennedy isn't 'anti-establishment' in any way that would actually help working-class people at the expense of wealthy plutocrats."
He has all but dismissed concerns about health insurers like UnitedHealthcare, which made $23 billion in profits last year and now reportedly denies 1 in 3 medical claims, including for cancer treatments in some cases.
"The profit motive is human nature," Kennedy said in an interview with the online news show Breaking Points in 2023.
The nominee said at the hearing that he has "often disturbed the status quo by asking uncomfortable questions," but in an exchange with Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) about Medicare and Medicare Advantage, the privatized system into which right-wing policymakers aim to push more seniors, even as it denies patients necessary care, Kennedy made clear again that he doesn't aim to question the status quo regarding the for-profit system.
Americans "would prefer to be on private insurance," said Kennedy. "Most Americans, if they could afford to be, will be on private insurance."
The comment drew incredulous laughter from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a longtime proponent of Medicare for All, according to reports.
Kennedy didn't cite any sources for his claim. A Gallup poll last month found that 62% of U.S. adults—the highest percentage in a decade—believe the government should guarantee that all Americans have health coverage. The survey was released days after the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, an event that sparked a nationwide discussion over the for-profit healthcare industry's claim-denial practices and exorbitant out-of-pocket costs for patients, which have proven deadly for some and have pushed millions of Americans into medical debt.
Later, Sanders pointed to the $70 billion the insurance industry raked in last year as 85 million Americans remained uninsured or underinsured and asked whether Kennedy agrees that the U.S. "should join every other major country on Earth and guarantee healthcare as a human right."
Kennedy replied that healthcare should not be treated as a human right as free speech is, because "in healthcare, if you smoke cigarettes for 20 years and you get cancer, you are now taking from the pool."
Annabelle Gurwitch, an author and activist, said Kennedy's response pointed to a worldview that is "dangerous to our health."
"So now we are going to determine care based on a metric that measures perceived responsibility: We'll need to police eating habits, drinking habits, and perhaps genetics and doling out care based on that," said Gurwitch, urging senators to "vote no on Kennedy."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular