Plano 4th of July Parade

The City of Plano has an active holiday weekend coming up headlined by the annual 4th of July parade hosted by the Plano Early Lions Club. The parade starts SATURDAY at 9 a.m. and runs north on Independence Parkway from Plano Senior High School to St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church. View the route here.

The Texas Democratic Women of Collin County and the Democratic Party of Collin County will be two of the groups in the parade.

The TDWCC plans to have a decorated convertible, walkers carrying the TDWCC banner and a live donkey!!

The DPCC will also have several decorated vehicles and more county Democrats walking in the parade.

If you want to join in the parade and walk with the TDWCC and DPCC groups, you can look for the Democratic entourage at the parade line up in the parking lot behind the Plano Senior High School by 8:30 a.m. on Saturday - ask if they have room for you to join in.

Wear red, white, and blue! and remember to take your hat and a bottle of water or two!!!

Many "Satisfied" With Their Health Ins. Coverage, Until They Really Need It

Health insurance is supposed to offer protection — both medically and financially. But as it turns out, an estimated three-quarters of people who are pushed into personal bankruptcy by medical problems actually had insurance when they got sick or were injured.

Many of those who have health insurance really aren’t “insured” from the financial burdens of rising health care costs. A national study released this year found that while medical debt contributed to 62 percent of the bankruptcies in 2007, 78 percent of those bankruptcy filers had health insurance but “still were overwhelmed by their medical debt.”

“Under-insurance is the great hidden risk of the American health care system,” says Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard law professor who has analyzed medical bankruptcies. “People do not realize they are one diagnosis away from financial collapse.”

UnitedHealth, for example, has been selling policies with sharply limited coverage through AARP, the advocacy group for older people. One of the plans capped reimbursement for an operation at $5,000, for example, although many procedures cost at least several times that amount.

Last week, a former Cigna executive warned at a Senate hearing on health insurance that lawmakers should be careful about the role they gave private insurers in any new system, saying the companies were too prone to “confuse their customers” [making them think they have coverage that the actually do not have] and dropping their customers when they file high dollar claims for expensive medical treatments that should be covered.

“The number of uninsured people has increased as more have fallen victim to deceptive marketing practices and bought what essentially is fake insurance,” Wendell Potter, the former Cigna executive, testified. Potter also said, companies routinely drop seriously ill policyholders so they can meet "Wall Street's relentless profit expectations." "They look carefully to see if a sick policyholder may have omitted a minor illness, a pre-existing condition, when applying for coverage, and then they use that as justification to cancel the policy, even if the enrollee has never missed a premium payment and the application omission is unrelated to the illness currently afflicting the policy holder," Potter said.

Most Americans who have private health insurance say they are fairly happy with the cost and quality of their own insurance according to a recent poll. In terms of quality, 77 percent say they are satisfied with their own insurance coverage even though one in five report they or someone in their household have had to go without a test, treatment or procedure that their doctor recommended because their health insurance plan wouldn’t cover it.

Most who say they are satisfied with their coverage have not experienced a serious illness that requires high dollar medical treatments. For those who are afflicted with a serious high dollar illness, many tell a common heartbreaking story that their private insurance company abandons them just when they need their live saving insurance coverage the most.

Republicans continue to say that "free market competition" among private health insurance companies can do a better job of providing health coverage for Americans than any variation of government sponsored program. The problem with that argument is that the private health insurance industry is no long competitive. The private health insurance sector today looks more like an anti-competitive monopoly. According to the recently released HCAN report, “Premiums Soaring in Consolidated Health Insurance Market“:

In the past 13 years, after more than 400 corporate mergers among health insurers, a small number of health insurance companies now dominate local markets. According to the American Medical Association, 94 percent of insurance markets in the United States are now highly concentrated, and insurers are thriving in the anti-competitive marketplace, raking in enormous profits and paying out huge CEO salaries.

These mergers and consolidations have created a marketplace where a very small number of larger companies use their monopolistic power to raise premiums—an average of 87 percent over the past six years—restrict and reduce benefit packages and control and cut provider payments.

More:

• NYT: Insured, but Bankrupted by Health Crises
• Poll: Most Back Public Health Care Option
• Gingrich On Private Health Insurance Companies: ‘They Have It Done Well’
• President Barack Obama Pleads For Action On Health Care

Powerful Health Care Stories From Around Collin Co.

A few weeks ago, President Obama asked Americans to share their personal health care crisis stories with America. Hundreds of thousands of stories were posted on the Organizing for America website from every corner of the country, including Collin Co.

I encourage all to read some of these stories from your friends and neighbors living in cities around Collin County:

• Plano, Tx
• Frisco, Tx
• Allen, Tx
• McKinney, Tx 1
• McKinney, Tx 2
• Celina, Tx
• Wylie, Tx

Please remember to support the free clinics doing so much good in Collin County. (Read Health Care Crisis In Collin County) Here are some of our free clinics that would be happy to accept your kind support:

Plano Children’s Medical Clinic	1407 14th St. Plano, TX 75074	(972) 801-9689
Geriatric Wellness Center of Collin Co.	401 W. 16th St. Suite 600 Plano, TX 75075	(972) 941-7335
Children & Community Health Center	120 So. Central Expwy Suite 102 McKinney, TX 75070	(972) 547-0606
Adult Clinic	2520 Ave. K Suite 100 Plano, TX 75074,	(972) 423-4941
Frisco Cares Children’s Clinic	6811 Oak St. Frisco, TX 75035	(469) 556-8452
Assistance Center of Collin Co.	900 E. 18th St. Plano, TX 75074	(972) 422-1850
Community Dental Care of Plano	900 E. Park Blvd., Suite 180 Plano, TX 75074	(972) 633-3383

Republicans SayTheir Own Mistakes Prove Government Can't Work.

WSJ Online Opinion By THOMAS FRANK: The myth [that government doesn't work and will only screw up what ever it touches] has been getting a lot of play from conservatives in recent weeks as the debate over health care has heated up.

The message, as always, is that government can't do anything right. [Pres. Ronald Reagan, "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help."]

Where the conservative mythologists show their hand is when they use their own monumental screw-ups, committed during conservatism's long years in charge of the government, to prove that government in general is a futile proceeding, and that Democratic health-care plans, in particular, can't possibly succeed.

We heard this bizarre reasoning during last year's campaign season. "Unless you're pleased with the way the federal government has been running anything lately," Gov. Sarah Palin declared last October, when the federal government had been answering to her fellow Republican for nearly eight years, "I don't think that it's going to be real pleasing for Americans to consider health care being taken over by the feds."

Among former President George W. Bush's gravest and most characteristic blunders, of course, was his administration's response to Hurricane Katrina, when the nation learned the true price of government by crony and contractor. But for conservatives, that is too nuanced a view. For conservatives, the real lesson to learn from [Pres. Bush's blundered handling of] Katrina, as we debate health care, is simply that government can never work.

I've always thought that P.J. O'Rourke was only half joking when he wrote, years ago, that "Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work, and then they get elected and prove it." ...government fails constantly when conservatives run it because making it work would be, for many of those conservatives, to traduce the very laws of nature.

A government that works, some conservatives fear, is dangerous stuff - a possible myth-ending doomsday scenario for conservatism itself. [Give Americans a universal healthcare insurance option that is cheaper, gives better coverage, can't be canceled as soon as the insured is struck with a high dollar catastrophic illness and that works better that private insurance, and the conservative myth about government goes the way of "The Emperor's New Clothes."]

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