Recent comments

I saw your interview on Bill Moyer's journal. I want to thank you. It is rare to hear from someone formerly in the ranks of Corporate America express such a heartfelt shift in thinking. As a former "insider" you have much to offer what is currently passing as "health care debate" in this country. We need more people like you who engage with the critical flaws in our system and who can point us in the direction toward creating a new one that will be more responsive to All Americans. As an educator working in a school district, I have found the increasing costs that employees (even in the public sector) are asked to shoulder burdensome. So much so, that last year when my partner lost her job, we could not afford to cover her and the costs of COBRA were out of reach. We were faced with a daunting choice between paying our mortgage (and keeping a roof over our heads) or providing health coverage for our family. We chose the former. My situation is only one of many, but it does go to the heart of the matter. In the most recent spat of scare attacks, those supporting the current system as the best possible argue that employees somehow have access through their employers. This notion does not square for a growing number of Americans. I appreciate the perspective you bring to the discussion. I will be following your blog. I think every American should. I will do my best to get the word out. With much appreciation. cyclingjs

I just watched online, Bill Moyers interviewing you, and also your testimony in Congress. I was both happy and depressed. Happy, because an industry insider is finally fighting back against the crushing power of the insurance industry. Your message is right on taget. Depressed, because I can't help wondering how we are ever going to overcome the industry's power, when so many members of congress are bought and paid for with insurance company profits. What chance does America have for real reform against such power? Depressed, too, because your interview was on PBS. You need to be speaking out where everyone can see you, during popular TV shows like football games or Survivor or American Idol, that draw millions, not on PBS where you're already "preaching to the choir" (and sadly a very small choir at that). Sadly, I don't think money can be raised to put you speaking out where everyone will hear you. In my spare time, I do volunteer work with an organization called Change That Works. I've personally spoken to about 60 people, and 55 of them had health care horror stories (many that brought tears to my eyes, like the young mom with breast cancer whose insurance company basically told her to either file bankruptcy or die and leave her kids with no parents), and we have sent these stories to congress. All of our Change That Works volunteers are sending stories by the dozens to Congress, but I fear these stories will fall on deaf ears since lobbyists have already bought them off. But what sticks in my mind is the 80-year-old man who loudly argued with me that "There's not a damn thing wrong with health care in this country!" I wish he could tell that to my older brother. But sadly, my brother passed away last year at age 55. See, Richie was a musician, a brilliant composer of very original music. He had no health insurance, couldn't afford it. When he got bone marrow cancer two years ago, the best he could afford was some emergency-room chemo, and an odd procedure that extracts his bone marrow, spins it reall fast through a centrifuge as if that somehow magically eliminates cancer, and then puts his own cancerous marrow back into him. He went into remission for a couple of months, but since the cancer cells had never really been removed from his marrow, the cancer was soon back and more aggressive than ever. I offered to provide a bone marrow trasplant, but without insurance, the treatment was too expensive so he couldn't do that. One of my brother's chemo treatments, by an emergency room intern, went horribly wrong, and within 30 minutes after he got home, my brother was dead at age 55. A tribute concert was held in his memory. 17 bands played in his memory, and alkl recalled him as brilliant and one band said the precision written into his music made it the most difficult they had ever played. I didn't see a single insurance comapny executive in teh audience, even though they and their greedy policies had killed him just as surely as if they had fired a gun at him. I can no longer share childhood reminisces with Richie, or tell him what's going on in my life, good and bad, or hear about his life, his musical triumphs, and the world has lost a brilliant and innovative composer of original music. His music was never really my cup of tea, but I was always proud of him for his originality and creativity, and I miss him terribly. By the way, his widow, my sister-in-law, also has no medical insurance! If and when she gets ill, that will be a death sentence for her, as it was for her husband. How many more people must die for insurance company profits, before we get real reform? I love that you're speaking out, but you need forums where you'll actually get heard. Only when every American stands up will we have a power equal to the insurance lobby. You need to reach that 80-year-old man who can't tell my now-dead brother about how there's no problem with health care in the good old USA. One more health care story: I was laid off in 2001, and there went my medical insurance! I got on a COBRA plan for me, my wife, and our son, at $850 a month. Being out of work, I had to raid my 401K to pay it, costing me not only the tax on the withdrawn money, but also an early-withdrawl tax penalty. I will have far less to retire on. But also, I could not set-aside any money for our son to go to college. During that time, I fell off a ladder and severly damaged my left hand in the fall; the cost to fix my hand was $65,000; I now have about 95% of my hand functioning back, but at the cost that my son did not go to college. I did eventually get another job and get medical insurance again, but not before huge financial costs to my retirement and my son's ediuctaion. That 80 year old's voice keeps echoing in my head: "There's not a damned thing wrong with health care in this country!" The indutsry you were so long a part of has done a great job of brainwashing citizens and politicians, how do we fight back against that? Even though 55 of the 60 people I've talked to so far support health cae reform, sometimes the battle just seems overhelming, the odds stacked too heavily against us. Keep fighting the good fight, and I will do the same.