health insurance

As Republican freshmen head to Congress, many of them are riding a wave of promises to repeal "Obamacare." As Jamie Court noted on our show last week, one of the most unpopular elements of the bill is the mandate that Americans purchase private health insurance. But Wendell Potter, former health insurance industry insider, notes that that is the part of the bill that is most popular with the insurance companies that bankrolled those same Republicans.Donna Smith of National Nurses United (and of Michael Moore's health care film Sicko) asks, meanwhile, if there's any value at all created by the private health care industry. We try to answer that question with Donna and Wendell in our studio, as well as the question of what luck Republicans will have with repeal, and what can be done on a state level.Hope is in short supply these days, particularly for those in America's packed prison system. California incarcerates more women than any other state, and when those women get out of jail they often have nothing more than $200 in their pockets and hope to go on. Susan Burton was one of those women once, and now she's founder and executive director of A New Way of Life Reentry Project, a nonprofit organization that helps formerly incarcerated women get their lives back together.Susan has been named one of CNN's ten Heroes this year, and is in the running for the top spot, and she joins us via Skype, along with Kimberle Crenshaw, who explains just why Susan's nomination gives her hope in a bleak time.

Wendell Potter worked for CIGNA health insurers for more than 15 years, including a position as head of communications. He left that job, in a 180-degree switch, to fight for the rights of all Americans to affordable health care. He now serves as Senior Fellow on Health Care at the Center for Media and Democracy, and he joined Laura in studio today to give us a quick update on the health care reform process, explain the so-called "Cadillac tax," and remind us all that the battle isn't over yet -- there's still time to fight.

San Francisco is a popular tourist destination but an expensive city in which to live. Hotel workers at the Grand Hyatt, many of them Chinese immigrants, were recently told that their new contract would require them to pay for their own health insurance despite their full-time jobs doing physical labor. A couple of hundred dollars a month make a huge difference for the hotel workers, so they went on strike to protest the unfair labor practices. Thanks to New America Media for the video.

Daniel Gross asked earlier this week why there wasn't more outrage in the country over the state of the economy, saying that if we haven't seen a revolution yet, we probably wouldn't. Yet popular protests have been happening across the country this summer and fall and show no signs of stopping. A lot of media attention has been paid to the 9/12, tea party and town hall protests. Our question: Where's the left-wing populist anger? Plus all the day's news.