About Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor

Senior editor, American Journal of Nursing; editor of AJN Off the Charts.

Reform Watch: Insider Exposes Insurance Industry’s Practices; Obama Says Nurses Know Health Care Best

Kaiser Health News draws attention to a WSJ story about a former health insurance PR insider who’s been speaking out against insurance practices and the industry’s attack campaign against health care reform:

A former health insurance spokesman speaks out against insurance practices. The Wall Street Journal/Dow Jones reports: “Wendell Potter, former chief spokesman for health insurer Cigna Corp., describes himself in his Twitter bio as a ‘journalist who spent 20 years undercover as HMO PR flack, now writing all about it.’ While Potter chuckles about the line, he is serious about his foray into the U.S. health reform debate, where he is campaigning for a public health-plan option and, with mild delivery and tough words, targeting what he calls ‘deceptive and dishonest’ tactics of a for-profit health insurance industry that’s fighting such a plan.” 

And in an interview with NPR (full transcript here), President Obama calls nurses “the people who know health care best” and says they are among those who know why we need health care reform:

JIM LEHRER: And you’re not — you will not be satisfied by somebody or some group or somebodies that say, “Well, OK, let’s do it — but we can’t do it now; we have economic things to do. We have other things in the economy to deal with; let’s wait a year, let’s wait six months. Forget it, huh?”

PRESIDENT OBAMA: If not now, when? We have literally been waiting 50 years and we still haven’t gotten it done. And the longer we delay, the more those special […]

2009-07-21T17:14:44-04:00July 21st, 2009|health care policy, nursing perspective|0 Comments
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IOM Commission on Future of Nursing: Help or Waste?

Nursing still needs one united voice to speak on such issues. Maybe this work will help to solidify such a voice. I know that Donna Shalala, the Commission's co-chair, will continue to champion nursing and breaking down the barriers to access to nursing services. I hope organized nursing will not wait for Shalala, but will ask how it can support the IOM's work.

2009-07-21T11:22:08-04:00July 21st, 2009|career, nursing perspective|0 Comments
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Vaccine Wars Ensue as H1N1 Mutates – Just Alarmist Sci-Fi Fantasy?

Picture this: in early September of this year, the novel H1N1 influenza virus mutates into a strain that can quickly lead to wracking fevers, violent vomiting, respiratory failure, dehydration, and death. It is also highly resistant to existing antiviral agents. The first cases of this new strain are identified after a spate of deaths in a Kansas City nursing home as well as among members of a church choir in the same city. The new strain quickly shows up in a number of major metropolitan areas in the U.S. and then in several European countries. As hospitals are swamped and the number of deaths rises unabated, borders are sealed between countries—but it's too late to stop the new strain from spreading as the fall and winter flu season gets into full swing.

2016-11-21T13:25:13-05:00July 16th, 2009|Nursing|0 Comments
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Obama’s Deal with Hospitals – What Does It Mean for Nurses and Patients?

From boliston, via Flickr

On July 8, vice president Joe Biden announced that in striving to gain support for its health reform plan, the White House reached an agreement with the key hospital groups, including the American Hospital Association, the Federation of American Hospitals, and the Catholic Health Association of the United States.

The deal is a quid pro quo deal: according to the AHA Web site, the associations agreed they will not fight $155 billion in cuts in Medicare and Medicaid payments, in return for assurances that the cuts are linked to expanded coverage. Additionally, if health reform legislation turns out to include a public insurance plan, then hospitals will receive payments higher than the traditional Medicare and Medicaid rates. The idea is that losses from the reduced payments would be offset by insurance payments from the increased numbers of patients who will be covered. Hospitals will have fewer “pro bono” patients to deal with.

So how will this affect patient care and nursing services? […]

2016-11-21T13:25:15-05:00July 16th, 2009|health care policy, nursing perspective, nursing research, students|0 Comments
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Historic Moment for Health Care – Time to Put Cynicism Aside?

Timothy Egan at the NY Times says we’ve reached a historic legislative moment in the U.S. He’s talking about the actual possiblity that health care reform will be passed by Congress. It probably won’t be the version of reform that everyone wants—even so, he argues, it may still lead to a health care system that Americans will someday take for granted and come to see as absolutely essential to their security and quality of life.

Politics is so often a salon sport, with its up-and-down arrows, weekly winners and losers, and reliable hypocrisies providing sustainable entertainment for the permanent class in Washington. But every now and then elected officials do something that has deep and lasting consequences — a generational life-changer.

This happened 44 years ago, with the creation of Medicare, the socialized health care plan for the elderly. At the time, the poorest Americans were more often the oldest Americans. And half of all seniors had no health care coverage.

Are you too cynical at this point to care, do you want things to stay just as they are, or do you actually feel some real hope?

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2016-11-21T13:25:17-05:00July 16th, 2009|health care policy|2 Comments
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Views expressed on the blog are solely those of the authors or persons quoted. They do not necessarily reflect AJN’s views or those of Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.
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