Thursday, October 6, 2016

Coloradans for Coloradan need YES on Amendment 69

{edited for typos, Thursday 6:45pm}

The main reason opponents of Amendment 69, such as ColoradansForColoradans.Com have to say Vote No is that it will be a challenging audacious undertaking that will take much effort over the next couple years to succeed.  

That's a scary thing.  We fear change.  We fear challenges.  

What the corporate funded ColoradansForColoradans.Com doesn't tell you is why so many Coloradans want to embrace that challenge of rebuilding our health care system.  

Our current heath care system is increasingly run by corporations whose number one duty above all else is to provide profits for share holders and earning bonuses for executives.  That is it!  Everything else is secondary to that "fiduciary responsibility."  When Pinnacol's CEO and president goes around raving about how great Colorado's worker comp system is, it's because it's a great profit machine!


Why not ask around among your friends and relatives, find out who's been injured on the job, ask them about how well the process served them.  What about the enormous  insurance premium increases in line for next year?  

ColoradoCare is all about caregivers who got sick of seeing 30 to 40% of their time and talent going to administrative paperwork, much of it dedicated to rejecting claims.  They want to treat patients - not serve corporate overlords and their endless demands for paperwork.  They got tired of seeing the consequences of corporate's amoral attitude towards people in need.


WE WANT 100% OF OUR HEALTH CARE PAYMENTS GOING TO PROVIDING A HEALTHY COLORADO HEALTH CARE SYSTEM AND WORKERS COMP SYSTEM,

rather than frivolous profits for a few.

That for me is what ColoradoCare and Amendment 69 is all about.


For more evidence to support my opinions, please read the following.


(hat tip to Tom Horiagon MD)
U.S. Labor Department: 
States Are Failing Injured Workers

A new Department of Labor report says cuts to state workers’ comp systems have left injured workers with inadequate benefits and raises the specter of federal oversight. The findings echo those of a ProPublica and NPR investigation last year.

ProPublica, Oct. 5, 2016, 6:01 a.m.
A new Department of Labor report says cuts to state workers’ comp systems have left injured workers with inadequate benefits and raises the specter of federal oversight. The findings echo those of a ProPublica and NPR investigation last year.

This story was co-published with NPR.
A U.S. Department of Labor report released today details the bleak fate facing the nation’s injured workers, noting that those hurt on the job are at “great risk of falling into poverty” because state workers’ compensation systems are failing to provide them with adequate benefits.
The report lays the groundwork for renewed federal oversight of state workers’ comp programs, providing a detailed history of the government’s past efforts to step in when states fell short. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, said in a statement Tuesday night that he was drafting legislation “to address many of the troubling findings laid out in this report” and hoped to advance it in the next Congress.

The 43-page report was prompted by a letter last fall from 10 prominent lawmakers, including Brown, urging more action to protect injured workers following a ProPublica and NPR series on workers’ comp. The stories found that since 2003, more than 30 states had changed their laws, causing some workers to lose their homes, or be denied surgeries or prosthetic devices their doctors recommended.

The Labor Department’s conclusions echo ProPublica and NPR’s findings that states have decreased benefits, created hurdles to medical care, raised the burden of proof to qualify for help and shifted costs to public programs, such as Social Security Disability Insurance. …

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