Green - Defend yourself: how to protect your health, your money, and your rights in 10 key areas of your life

Australia

HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.

Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street

Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

http://www.harpercollins.com.au

Canada

HarperCollins Canada

2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor

Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada

http://www.harpercollins.ca

New Zealand

HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited

P.O. Box 1

Auckland, New Zealand

http://www.harpercollins.co.nz

United Kingdom

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

77-85 Fulham Palace Road

London, W6 8JB, UK

http://www.harpercollins.co.uk

United States

HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

10 East 53rd Street

New York, NY 10022

http://www.harpercollins.com

Copyright 2006 by The New Democracy Project

D EFEND YOURSELF! . Copyright 2013 by Mark J. Green. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

This book is published in the United States of America.

FIRST EDITION

ISBN-13: 9781557047168

ISBN-10: 1557047162

EPub Edition July 2013 ISBN 9780062311986

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Defend yourself : how to protect your health, your money, and your rights in 10 key areas of your life / by Mark Green. 1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN-13: 9781557047168

ISBN-10: 1557047162 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. LawUnited StatesPopular works. 2. Life skillsUnited States. I. Title.

KF387.G699 2005

349.73dc22

2005031127

To the memory of a great fighter, Harry Chapin

S ome of our roles in lifesuch as those of patient, client, employee, consumer, and taxpayermake us feel like a cork bobbing in an ocean of big interests and institutions. Small and helpless, we are forever figuring out how to navigate that vast ocean.

And the situation is getting worse. Much of the large middle class in this country is slipping back into a kind of near-poverty: real income for the average worker has essentially stagnated over the past thirty years, as it often takes two incomes in a family to maintain a quality of life that one income supported in 1956 or 1976. Its like trying to run up an ever-accelerating down escalator.

Ever since the time of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the struggling middle class (and those attempting to enter it) has looked to the federal government for a safety net of Social Security and minimum wages and for vigorous consumer, environmental, and labor regulation. But in this era of Bush and Co.when the operating philosophy seems to be laissez-faire, or youre-on-your-own, fellagovernment protection is becoming less and less reliable.

So its time to defend yourself! Why tolerate an HMO that wont pay for your emergency surgery because you didnt give notice beforehand? Why accept a higher insurance rate because you live in a low-income community? Why lose custody of your children because of judges who tilt in favor of the monied spouse (i. e., high-income men)? Instead, you should take advantage of the large body of laws, rights, and strategies available to workers, consumers, and citizens in order to talk back and fight back. In a world where the Internet can instantaneously provide you with much of the information you need to negotiate confidently with the powers-that-be, nothing is stopping you from getting what you deserve.

For nearly forty yearsas a young public interest lawyer in the 1970s and as a public official in the 1990sIve been trying to organize people to vindicate their rights. Or, as one federal regulator put it decades ago, The way to keep government [or business] upright is to lean on it from all sides.

So in 1967, I persuaded 178 other summer congressional interns to send a petition to LBJ opposing the Vietnam War (leading to the elimination of the House intern program for two years). In 1978, when Congress was balking at enacting our proposed Consumer Protection Agency because it was just more big government, I organized The Nickel Campaign and got 40,000 people to inundate members with actual nickelssince that was the exact annual cost per citizen of the agency. In 1996, upset at how tobacco ads were targeting kids, I launched Kick Butts Day (with President Clinton and Garry Trudeau), and now every April some 800 cities engage young students in a day of pro-health/anti-tobacco activities. And when Mayor Rudy Giuliani tried to change the NYC Charter in 1999 so that the elected Public Advocate (then me) wouldnt succeed him if he left to run for the U.S. Senate, I put together a large labor and civic coalition that defeated him in a referendum, 74 percent to 26 percent.

Defend Yourself! is my best effort to convey some of the lessons Ive learned to others who feel aggrieved by some abuse of power. Its a one-stop guide to preserving your money, your health, and your rights in a world of powerful big business and ineffective big government. Give yourself, in effect, a pay raise by having a copy of Defend Yourself! by your side to help you exercise your rights the next time some retailer or lawyer or boss tries to unfairly separate you from your money. If youre not interested in getting a 1000+ percent return on your $16.95 investment, then please dont read this book.

MARK GREEN

FEBRUARY 2006

NEW YORK CITY

By reserving the right to decide what isand what is notmedically necessary, managed-care plans can now practice medicine without a license and without the same accountability that physicians face every day.

John Nelson, American Medical Association President

W hile being injured or ill can be a frightening experience for anyone, skyrocketing medical bills and prescription drug costs can be especially terrifying for those without health coverage. Even those with a health care plan are at the mercy of insurance companies, HMOs, for-profit hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies, all out to profit from your pain. Nor has the federal government done much to make the system more effective and affordable. At any given moment, 45 million Americans have no health coverage at all, while some 82 millionapproximately a quarter of all Americansgo without it at some point over a two-year period and over 65 million have no prescription drug benefits.

Meanwhile, the cost of health care is again rising far faster than wages or other prices. According to the advocacy group Families USA, workers premiums increased 35.9 percent between 2000 and 2004, while wages rose by only 12.4 percent. At the same time, the health care industries are reporting record profits: HMOs had a 52 percent profit increase in 2003 and pharmaceutical companies continue to be among the most profitable in the world. Employers, once the proud providers for millions of working Americans, are increasingly cutting back on coverage to reduce costs, leaving more of their employees to fend for themselves. The result of this crisis: the Institute of Medicine estimates that 18,000 people die prematurely each year due to lack of health care. Until our health system is significantly overhauledunlikely, since President Bush derided John Kerrys reasonable plans as just more big government if not socialismyoull have to know the current laws and rules to help you get the health care you need at a price you can afford.