The workers at Lockheed Martin in Fort Worth, Texas, are a spunky, tenacious bunch.  Amidst a recession with sky high jobless rates, many workers only dream of taking on the company to stop concessions.  Some have the courage to fight.

These 3,600 workers, members of District Lodge 776, International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW), saw Lockheed Martin coming after their pensions and health care and made a plan to stop that from happening.  The company wants to impose a high deductible health plan that shifts the burden of payment for those who get sick onto the patients.  A family of three would have to pay $2,000 before the insurance payment kicks in.
As health policy expert Dr. John Geyman puts it:  “High-deductible plans equate with underinsurance.  These plans leave people with health care needs vulnerable to financial.

MONDAY, JUNE 25, 2012


What Would Health Insurance Cost if the Supreme Court Overturns the Individual Mandate But Leaves the Insurance Reforms in Place?

That will be the big question on Thursday if the Court throws out the mandate and the parallel insurance reforms that would require health plans to take all comers without regard to their health status and require insurers to cover pre-existing conditions.

But before we get to that scenario, let’s look at another possibility.
http://healthpolicyandmarket.blogspot.com/2012/06/what-would-health-insurance-cost-if.html


Dems Play with Private Insurance Industry, Get Burnt

by Wendell Potter
Et tu, Ron?
As President Obama read former Aetna CEO Ron Williams’ op-ed in The Wall Street Journal renouncing his support for a key provision of the health care reform law, he must have felt like Julius Caesar when Caesar realized, as he drew his last breath, that his close friend Brutus was in cahoots with his assassins.