Some in Congress want to raise funds for health reform by taxing high-premium plans. Not only will such a plan affect middle class families, it also discourages the type of good comprehensive coverage we should all be afforded.
If you want to know why the insurance companies are enemy #1 when it comes to health reform, read this:
Christina Turner feared that she might have been sexually assaulted after two men slipped her a knockout drug. She thought she was taking proper precautions when her doctor prescribed a month's worth of anti-AIDS medicine.
Only later did she learn that she had made herself all but uninsurable.
Turner had let the men buy her drinks at a bar in Fort Lauderdale. The next thing she knew, she said, she was lying on a roadside with cuts and bruises that indicated she had been raped. She never developed an HIV infection. But months later, when she lost her health insurance and sought new coverage, she ran into a problem.
Turner, 45, who used to be a health insurance underwriter herself, said the insurance companies examined her health records. Even after she explained the assault, the insurers would not sell her a policy because the HIV medication raised too many health questions. They told her they might reconsider in three or more years if she could prove that she was still AIDS-free.
In the insurance company world of greed and money, rape is a pre-existing condition. Shouldn't that be criminal?
This is why we're marching on the insurance companies tomorrow.
These companies need to be taken down a notch. They need their anti-trust exemption revoked, and they need competition from a public health insurance option, so people like Christina will at least have somewhere to go when a heartless bureaucrat denies them the medicine they needs to keep them healthy after their rape.
Tomorrow, Susan Pearl is coming to Washington, D.C.
She's coming on behalf of her son, Ian Pearl. Ian survives on a ventilator, a lasting condition stemming from respiratory collapse he suffered in 1991. His premiums from a Guardian Insurance policy Susan bought in 1981 have risen from $100 per month to over $3,000 per month. And now, Guardian is eliminating his policy, calling him a "dog" in internal documents. In Ian's own words:
I am not a "dog." That's what health insurance executives called me because I have a disease. I'm also not a "trainwreck," another term they used for members like me.
…
After decades of medical emergencies, we still weren't prepared for the latest crisis — this one created by the same insurance company that once saved my life. Guardian abruptly withdrew our health plan from all policyholders in New York where my father's business is based. Guardian offered a 'replacement' plan with low benefits and no home nursing benefits. They knew that I would never survive with such a plan, but they didn't care.
Suspecting that this action was related to the high cost of my care, we filed a lawsuit and have asked the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to enforce existing federal laws and require Guardian to continue my health plan. Without federal intervention, I will lose this insurance, and that would be a death sentence.
Our lawsuit uncovered insurance company documents that confirmed my suspicion that I'm a target of discrimination. The documents revealed Guardian had compiled a "hit list" of its costliest members, including patients with muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, brain injury, and paralysis. Guardian executives referred to us all as "dogs" and "trainwrecks," and they debated how and when to dump us from the rolls. Laws prohibited the cancellation of the individual members with serious chronic health problems, so Guardian opted to cancel the plan for all members of this specific health plan in New York, an action that violates federal law.
Instead of living up to their obligations to Ian, and because they can't just recind Ian's coverage, Guardian decided they could make more money if they discontinued the entire product line, cutting off everyone on this plan in the state of New York, an action that's perfectly legal.
Without this plan, which will be taken away December 1st, Ian faces bankruptcy. The care that keeps him alive will cost him $700,000 per year. All because of Guardian's greed.
Susan Pearl is coming to D.C. tomorrow on behalf of Ian, and representatives from 7 other families, all victims of the insurance industry, will be there as well. Why? Because America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the insurance industry front group and lobbying arm, is having a conference in D.C. and all the insurance company CEOs will be there.
These seven families have sent a letter to Karen Ignagni, AHIP's top lobbyist, demanding a meeting with her so she can hear these stories and understand exactly what the companies she represents do to people. From the letter [pdf]:
We have lost siblings who could not get health insurance coverage due to pre-existing conditions. We have been overcharged, only to have our policies cancelled when our health care needs became less profitable for your members. We have been given the runaround in the midst of hospitalization and been forced to declare bankruptcy due to medical bills that your companies refused to cover. We have had to move back in with parents as medical expenses swallowed up our salaries and our savings.
While only seven of us will be at the Hilton on Thursday, we speak for millions who cannot obtain health insurance or who have coverage but still cannot get needed medical services.
Ms. Ignagni, we are not simply claims to be denied. We are siblings and parents and survivors who believe you should look us in the eye, hear our stories, and understand what you are lobbying against.
We'll all be at the Capitol Hilton in Washington, D.C. at 3:00 pm tomorrow. If you're in the are, you should join us. (Click here for details and to RSVP.) Karen Ignagni, you made $1.58 million in 2007. You can spare a few minutes to look these people in the eye and tell them why you're lobbying to protect corporate greed.
We expect to see you there.
Neither of the Senate health reform bills regulate health insurers enough and the regulations they do include apply only to the plans in the new health insurance exchange. That is why we need a public health insurance plan option to set a benchmark against which private insurers can be measured.
Obama group passes 300,000 calls for health care - Boston Globe
Pro-Obama groups said this morning they ended up at 315,023 calls to Congress on Tuesday pushing the health care overhaul, tripling the original goal of 100,000.
Speaker Pelosi set to stick with liberals on public health insurance option - The Hill
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is sticking with the liberal wing of her party on healthcare by choosing to go to the House floor with a public option based on Medicare, according to Democratic sources.
Liberals increase pressure for public insurance plan in health bill - Washington Post
Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid is facing intensifying pressure from liberal lawmakers to revive a proposed government insurance plan before health-care reform legislation reaches the Senate floor, amid signs that moderate Democrats may be warming to the idea.
Harry Reid: “We’re Leaning Towards Talking About A Public Option” - Greg Sargent
There was an odd, somewhat amusing moment at a presser in the Capitol today after Senate Dems huddled to discuss the final Senate health care bill, with Senator Harry Reid refusing to say that negotiations were progressing towards a public option.
Hill Aides: More Senators Would Back Public Plan If Obama Pushed Harder - Huffington Post
There is a growing sense on Capitol Hill that the White House's refusal to weigh in more forcefully in the health care debate could come at the cost of a public option for insurance coverage.
Health-care lobbyists continue spending spree - Washington Post
The August recess did little to slow the Washington lobbying frenzy over health-care reform, as insurers, drugmakers and hospitals continued to spend millions to attempt to sway the emerging legislation, according to new disclosure reports filed with Congress.
Dems eye insurance industry's antitrust protection - Associated Press
Top Senate Democrats intend to try to strip the health insurance industry of its exemption from federal antitrust laws as part of the debate over health care, according to congressional officials, the latest evidence of a deepening struggle over President Barack Obama's top domestic priority.
House Dems want Medicare for everyone - The Hill
Say hello to “Medicare Part E” — as in, “Medicare for Everyone.”
House Democrats are looking at re-branding the public health insurance option as Medicare, an established government healthcare program that is better known than the public option.
A new poll is out today from the Washington Post, the guardian of DC beltway conventional wisdom. And guess what? The public health insurance option is overwhelmingly popular. Even the Post can't bury the lede, they ran with the headline: "Public option gains support: CLEAR MAJORITY NOW BACKS PLAN."
The poll confirms everything other previous polling has shown:
Now, the conventional wisdom says that taxing health benefits should be part of a health care bill, and a public health insurance option shouldn't, as they are in the Finance bill. The reasoning is that these things will make a health care bill bipartisan. But guess what? The Post polled that question, too, and the American people could care less about bipartisanship.
Both Greg Sargent and Jon Walker note it:
Which of these would you prefer –- (a plan that includes some form of government-sponsored health insurance for people who can’t get affordable private insurance, but is approved without support from Republicans in Congress); or
(a plan that is approved with support from Republicans in Congress, but does not include any form of government-sponsored health insurance for people who can’t get affordable private insurance)?
Prefer government-sponsored insurance: 51%
Prefer Republican support: 37%
When faced with the choice that may face the Senate - pass a public health insurance option or get a Republican vote or two - America wants the public option more than they want bipartisanship.
These poll numbers, coming from the voice of the establishment, should make it absolutely clear that the Beltway wisdom is wrong. The American people don't care about making the Senate's life easier, they care about results. Bipartisanship doesn't matter, but policy does.
The reform people want is real reform, with a public health insurance option and no taxing of health benefits. Bipartisanship only matters to a minority. Eventually, even the conventional wisdom has to catch up to reality.
I don’t deserve health care that meets my needs.
I shouldn’t demand fairness in my health care coverage.
I can’t do anything about it anyway.
That’s what the health insurance profiteers want you to think.
They aren’t thinking about the mother who is struggling to find insurance because she had a Caesarean section. Not the woman who survived domestic violence and now must face rejection by an insurance company for having a so-called “pre-existing condition.” Not the woman who pays more than a man for the same health coverage, even when maternity care isn’t covered.
Being a woman is NOT a pre-existing condition.
Public option gains support - Washington Post
A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that support for a government-run health-care plan to compete with private insurers has rebounded from its summertime lows and wins clear majority support from the public.
Public Option Gets New Life in Senate - Wall Street Journal
The idea of creating a government-run health-insurance plan, once on life support in the Senate, is making a recovery among Democrats writing health-care legislation.
Health insurance worries keep rising - Associated Press
The number of Americans worried about losing their current health care coverage keeps rising, even as President Barack Obama and a Democrat-led Congress strive to extend society's safety net to cover the uninsured, a new poll has found.
Pelosi Aims to Squeeze Skeptics on Public Option With Cheaper Bill Than Senate - TPM
The House health care bill is getting cheaper, but Democrats aren't boasting just yet. Because when they ultimately break silence the hope is to present conservative Democrats in both chambers with a bill that will walk the walk of fiscal responsibility–including a public option, which is projected to save the government billions.
Democrats holding health care events across N.C. - Burlington News
Democrats in North Carolina are holding health care events across the state, trying to build support for President Barack Obama’s overhaul agenda.
C.R. business owner asks Harkin’s aid on health care - GazetteOnline
Last summer, Shawn Gallagher’s small business was drowning in six-feet high floodwater. This fall, Gallagher is struggling to keep his head above a torrent of increasing health care costs.
Yesterday I had a quick chat with David Balto from the Center for America Progress, an antitrust attorney in the private sector, and former Policy Director of the Federal Trade Commission, about the piece I put up on what repealing the anti-trust exemption for the health insurance industry would do. He had a few key points to make. (The following is lightly edited.)
First, he made it clear that repealing the anti-trust exemption is essential to making health reform work:
The market is broken right now. The market is highly concentrated with most markets controlled by a monopoly or duopoly. As a result profits are skyrocketing, along with costs. This is a market that's tremendously broken.
The McCarran-Ferguson antitrust exemption makes a difference when there are several competitors in a market who use it to coordinate activity that might otherwise be illegal. But when you're a monopolist like the insurance companies, you don't have a competitor to collude with, so the insurance industry hasn't needed the exemption because they don't compete with anyone now.
However, that's set to change.
The goal of health reform is to enable competition to finally break out in these markets. If it does break out, then we have a really serious problem because the insurance companies can use the McCarran-Ferguson exemption to stifle competition in ways that would otherwise be illegal because they're exempt from anti-trust regulation.
In other words, creating a public health insurance option to compete with the insurance companies is only the first step. Unless we repeal their anti-trust exemption as well, they will be able to engage in all sorts of anti-competitive deceptive and fraudulent practices to drive out competition and keeping screwing me and you over.
Balto made another point, too, about what repealing this exemption would do for people:
The McCarran-Ferguson Act [the name of the anti-trust exemption] today serves as an obstacle to anti-trust and consumer protection enforcement by the federal government, because if you try and bring federal lawsuits, they will be stifled by McCarran-Ferguson. For example, the Ingenix suit [where UnitedHealth had to pay $350 million in a settlement concerning price fixing and fraud] was brought by the state of New York. If that same suit was brought by the Federal Trade Commission [the federal agency that handles anti-trust issues], insurance companies would have defended their conduct under the McCarran exemption.
So, the FTC has been handcuffed in trying to protect consumers against anti-competitive behavior by the insurance industry
To sum up, eliminating the McCarran-Ferguson exemption is essential to making health care reform work. Without it insurance companies can stifle the competition reform is intended to create.
This is the moment when Senators Max Baucus and Majority Leader Harry Reid (and President Obama) should make history by producing a Senate health reform bill that
Last week the Senate Finance Committee became the last of five Congressional committees to pass a health reform bill - this one by far the weakest of all the bills. Almost immediately a small group of Senators - Majority Leader Harry Reid, Finance Chair Max Baucus, and acting HELP Committee Chair Chris Dodd - huddled with a White House team led by Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to begin the mysterious process by which the more progressive HELP committee bill will be melded with the product of Baucus's mostly fruitless negotiation with Senate Republicans, only one of whom, Maine Senator Olympia Snowe, deigned to vote for the final Finance bill.
Reid and even Baucus say they personally support a public option, but they repeatedly point to the so-called "moderates" in their own party whose support is necessary to get to the 60 vote majority needed to pass a health reform bill in the Senate. With a smart legislative strategy, the 60 Democratic votes (which, with Snowe would total 61) could be called upon just to overcome a Republic filibuster, clearing the way for a 50 vote majority to pass a strong health reform bill — while letting more conservative Democrats vote against it. [More on this anti-filibuster unity strategy in columns to come.]