Real People Denied Real Healthcare is a new, online series of videos featuring patients telling their stories of abuse and mistreatment at the hands of a health insurance industry that makes money by denying care—not providing it. While Bonnie Drew, who is featured in the latest webisode of Real People Denied Real Heatlhcare, suffers from a lack of quality medical care, the health insurance giants are rolling out new credit cards so patients will be able to pay 30% interest, hospital managers are making millions, and 11-year-old asthmatic loser her healthcare for being adopted. No wonder activists around the country continue their push for SinglePayer healthcare for all Americans.
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Bonnie Drew thought she had health care—but when she got sick, she learned the bitter distinction between health insurance and healthcare. Health insurance doesn’t guarantee you healthcare.
Watch Bonnie Drew’s heartbreaking story.
Contrast her pain with what’s happening at the health insurance companies. They are having such a good time bankrupting Americans that they are going to start introducing their own credit cards…with interest as high as 30%.
That’s right, you miss a payment (say you get a huge medical bill…or you’re sick) and you get charged 30% interest.
30% interest.
Aetna's Healthy Living card, offered through Visa, has a 0 percent introductory annual percentage rate for the first 12 billing cycles, after which the standard APR financing rate is 9.9 percent for Platinum accounts and 15.99 percent for Preferred accounts. For late payments, the rate is 29.99 percent….
"Our intent in this is in providing our members a tool that we can use to help to fund their growing out-of-pocket expenses," said Gene Cronin, senior product management specialist for Aetna.
Wow, Gene, how helpful of Aetna to provide “members” with this “tool,” which by the way will remind them that even though YOU’RE the insurance company, THEY better be paying the health bills, oh and you’ll get to skim your interest off the top.
Meanwhile, hospital managers are making millions of dollars in pay and an 11-year-old asthmatic loses her health insurance for getting adopted.
Stories like these remind us why we have a movement for guaranteed healthcare in this country. Writer Michael Corcoran thinks this movement has “the wind at our backs,” while a California consumer activist reminds us to make sure we’re really working for patients, and a California nurse points out that Walter Reed is symbolic of the Bush Administration’s disdain for all patients.
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