Insured can't get help either

This is a window into our tragic healthcare disaster. Please watch the short clip and read through this thread. Then look around you at your friends and family. We need a better system if you want to protect yourself and your loved ones.

Lisa has been denied potential life saving care because of her insurance, NOT because she doesn't have it and hasn't been paying thru the nose for years to Blue Cross Blue Shield of California. She has been fighting breast cancer for 7 years. When time was very critical, the hospital we needed to get her care refused her insurance. Well, we don't like them either but what choice do we have?? None. Once you are diagnosed, you can't change insurance companies. No one will take you. I am wondering- is this what they call the "free market?”. It seems insurance companies dictate whether you can receive treatment, where you can go to get it, how quickly or not they will respond to your requests for benefits - all based on their bottom line, not the patient, the person who has been PAYING them to TAKE CARE OF THEM WHEN THEY ARE SICK!

As of today (Sunday, Feb 10th) Lisa has slipped into coma. She will maybe last another 72 hours like this before she leaves us. While this tragedy is the world to us there are so many suffering similar stories. How many more families will suffer such loss before we demand a better system?

Video Activism: Campaign For America's Future -Kids Warn Conservatives: No More Photo Ops

This is video activism at it's finest. Presented by the activist group: Campaign For America's Future this is a video that any articulate kid could make themselves. It sends a really powerful message to congress, and a really great idea for kids everywhere: No help for us, no photo ops with us for you. Bush has vetoed a children's health care program known as SCHIP that was trying to fill in some gaps for kids from families that don't qualify for medicade but also can't pay for private health insurance. It has been a very successful program and this expansion passed congress by a wide majority, The Senate has a veto proof majority but there is not quite enough votes in the house just yet. That means those of us who think this is a good idea need to put pressure on their representatives if they have been voting no up to this point. This is going to be a very close call. Please get active yourselves on this if you can.

I can't think of a more basic service a wealthy government should provide than making sure children from families with modest means are healthy. For me that ranks up there with law enforcement, fire protection, and public education. Of course these services to the public are socialism in the eyes of conservatives. Except, of course, for those services they use or need themselves. You know things like cheap clean water for their lawns or publicly maintained roads to their houses or massive search efforts when some billionaire crashes his plane or hot air balloon. Oh yea, and all those taxpayer funded health insurance policies that every member of congress and probably the President himself enjoys today. Socialist bastards.

The true free market would say that every road has a toll, the fire department and police will only come if your are subscribed to their services, water for your tap and clean air to breath should be paid for at market commodity prices, food that has been certified "safe" would be more expensive than uncertified food, all mail would be sent at Fedex prices, and any billionaire in a baloon or anybody who gets lost on their hunting trip better have his own rescue contractor at the appropriate market price. All that would cost individuals, even billionaires, many times more than they pay for these things in taxes but "socialism" is a great buzz word when politicians and pundits want to manipulate ignorant fools who feel smarter squealing at boogeymen than they do looking at facts and working out the math themselves.