NEWS

Excise Tax Loses Support Amid White House Push - New York Times

An agreement to tax high-cost, employer-sponsored health insurance plans, announced with fanfare by the White House and labor unions last month, is losing support from labor leaders, who say the proposal is too high a price to pay for the limited health care package they expect to emerge from Congress.

In California, Exhibit A in Debate on Insurance - New York Times

When Bernhard Punzet opened the dreaded envelope from Anthem Blue Cross one recent Saturday, it ruined his weekend.

Insurer Delays Rate Increase in California - Wall Street Journal

Health insurer Anthem Blue Cross will postpone its much-criticized plan to raise rates for some California residents who buy insurance on their own, after reaching a deal Saturday with state regulators.

Republicans Spurn Once-Favored Health Mandate - NPR

For Republicans, the idea of requiring every American to have health insurance is one of the most abhorrent provisions of the Democrats' health overhaul bills.

Reconciliation Alive Despite Health Care Summit - Roll Call

Senate Democrats say they see no need to abandon the idea of using reconciliation to pass health care reform this year just because President Barack Obama has scheduled a bipartisan summit next week to try to break the impasse on Capitol Hill.

Trial lawyers to Obama: Don’t deal on tort reform in healthcare neogtiations - The Hill

President Barack Obama wants a bipartisan deal on health reform, but trial lawyers don’t want him to deal on a top Republican priority: tort reform.

GOP, Expecting Little, Will Attend Health Summit - Roll Call

Having received invitations to President Barack Obama’s Feb. 25 health care summit and reviewed its proposed format, Congressional Republican leaders are dismissing the event as a political farce — albeit one they’re likely to attend.

OPINION

What To Make Of Anthem’s Rate Hikes - Think Progress

HCAN has responded to Anthem Blue Cross’s rate hikes (the company is a subsidiary of WellPoint) in the California individual market by releasing a report demonstrating how premium increases have been feeding insurer profits, not paying for health care costs. “The report finds that the top five largest for-profit insurance companies increased their profits by $12.2 billion last year while dropping coverage for 2.7 million Americans“.

How to Beat the Blues - The New Republic

As President Obama has said, the rate hikes and practices of Anthem Blue Cross of California are the “coming attractions” of our health system without reform. It’s a general argument that the status quo is not sustainable–a reminder that, whatever people feel about the legislation, they should be far more worried and angry about the health care system without reform.

Profits for largest insurers now 30% - PNHP

In a previous Quote of the Day (link above) it was pointed out that, for investor-owned private health insurers, the percentage of revenues reported as profits does not represent how lucrative the profits actually are for this industry. In light of record profits being reported, let’s look at an update of the numbers.

Leave Health Care to the States? - Matt Yglesias

There are a lot of problems with the idea of just leaving health reform up to the states to handle on a case-by-case basis, but Alec MacGillis captures perhaps the most morally serious of them—the states with tons of uninsured people are precisely the states where the political culture doesn’t care about poor people or those who lack insurance. Southern states, in particular, tend to have high uninsurance rates precisely because those are the states that haven’t already enacted measures to expand access to insurance.

A California insurer shows how health-care reform would work, and help - Ezra Klein

The Anthem Blue Cross saga appears to have a happy ending: After criticism from the administration, the insurer has delayed the planned 40 percent rate hike. That will give the company time to reevaluate whether it's worth the blow-back, and I'd guess there's a good chance it never takes effect at all.

But if this is a good outcome, it's a not a good policy. The insured can't depend on someone in the White House's communications shop noticing when an insurer tries to screw its customers. What we need is an actual policy standing between the insured and the grim incentives of their insurers. That's what health-care reform is meant to be, and the Anthem saga is a good example of how it would work.