By Ethan Rome - Executive Director, Health Care for America Now

Florida Gov. Rick Scott wants to cheat the families of his state out of $140 million in health insurance rebates. If Scott gets his way, it could harm consumers across the country.

Ripping off consumers and the health care system isn't new to Florida Gov. Rick Scott. He got rich leading a hospital company that paid a record $1.7 billion in criminal fines and civil penalties to the Justice Department for systematically defrauding federal health care programs. Scott went on to lead a high-profile campaign against health reform backed by the infamous right-wing billionaire Koch Brothers, and Scott used that campaign as a springboard to the governorship.

Now Scott wants his state to be exempted from federal rules that would require insurance companies to send $140 million in premium rebates to families over the next three years. Enter the big winners, the health insurance companies that will get the money instead of Florida's hard-working families.

Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) enacted last year, health insurers that fail to spend at least 80% of your premiums on actual health services must give the difference back to consumers. This is one of the best and possibly least known provisions in health care reform. It requires insurance companies to become more efficient and keep less money for profits and CEO salaries. It says that people paying premiums should get more value for their money.

The goal of the rule isn't to force companies to pay consumer rebates, it's to hold insurance companies accountable and get them to change their behavior. But if they don't, they're supposed to pay, and they shouldn't get off the hook just because they like their profits more than the new law. They should not be rewarded for failing to meet a basic standard because they can get politicians like Scott to take their side.

And let's not forget the most important thing: While insurance companies are making record profits, struggling families are desperate for relief. The people of Florida need the $140 million they're owed. But consumers won't get their money if Rick Scott gets his way. The Republican governor — who's been doing everything in his power to thwart implementation of the ACA — has been shamelessly trying to manipulate the law to pad the pockets of a private health insurance industry that will collect $934 billion in premiums this year.

Florida Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty is doing Scott's dirty work. McCarty is a staunch opponent of the ACA who recently led an unsuccessful effort to gut the 80% rule at the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. For his efforts, the National Association of Health Underwriters honored McCarty with the "Spirit of Independence Award." So the insurance industry can count on the insurance commissioner.

McCarty recently asked the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to give Florida's insurance companies special treatment. In order to get an exemption to the 80% rule, a state is supposed to meet some basic criteria, principally proving that its insurance market would be destabilized by the rule.

Florida doesn't meet any of the criteria, and its application to HHS fails to provide any supporting evidence. As Health Care for America Now (HCAN) detailed in a letter to HHS, the state offered no evidence that insurers would leave the state market, that consumers would have to do without the services of agents and brokers, or that anyone would go without coverage due to the rule. That's why HCAN asked HHS to reject Florida's request. Other national groups and 19 Florida health care and consumer organizations have done the same.

HCAN also asked HHS to hold a public hearing. Such a hearing would be the first of its kind — and the first opportunity for Florida's consumers to have any input on their state government's attempt to rob them of $140 million. It would also force the insurance companies seeking this special treatment to publicly face the consumers who will lose the millions of dollars they're entitled to under the ACA.

The Patient Bill of Rights in the ACA is about stopping insurance company abuses, and the 80% rule is an important part of it.

If Florida can get an unjustified exemption to this rule, it would send the message that anything goes, that the rule doesn't really matter and that insurance companies and the Republican politicians they own are in charge. We're counting on HHS and the Obama Administration to do the right thing and deny Florida's bogus request.

For Immediate Release - OCTOBER 27, 2011
Contact: Avram Goldstein 202-587-1634
agoldstein@healthcareforamericanow.org

Washington, DC - Health Care for America Now (HCAN), the nation's leading grassroots health care advocacy organization, has asked the Department of Health and Human Services to hold a public hearing on the state of Florida's request to be exempted from rules that would require insurance companies to send $140 million in premium rebates to families. Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), health insurers that fail to spend at least 80% of premium revenue on actual health services must give back the difference to consumers. Florida's submission to HHS failed to provide any evidence that the MLR would destabilize the health insurance market and does not warrant a special exception from HHS.

"At a time when insurance companies are making record profits and families are struggling to make ends meet, taking away rebates from consumers is unjustified and unconscionable," said Ethan Rome, HCAN's executive director. "The state offers no justification for its proposal to undercut this pro-consumer regulation. If the state of Florida gets its way, consumers will lose $140 million in rebates and insurance companies will get that money instead."

Other states have asked HHS to let their health insurers spend more than the maximum 20% of their premium revenue on profits, CEO pay, marketing, lobbying and administration. But Florida stands alone in seeking an adjustment on such a massive scale. HCAN believes that an open hearing as permitted by recently adopted HHS regulations would serve the public interest and expose the substantial flaws in Florida's request. If approved, the hearing would be the first of its kind.

According to HCAN's letter to the Department, the state offered no evidence that insurers would leave the state market, that consumers would have to do without the services of agents and brokers, or that anyone would go without coverage due to the rule.

Florida's request emerged from a highly charged political environment. Prior to his election, Florida Governor Rick Scott led an industry-backed campaign against passage of the ACA, and the governor has since refused to implement various provisions of the law. Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty has consistently been opposed to a meaningful rule on how much insurers must spend on actual health care. He led an effort to weaken the pro-consumer rule at the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

Governor Scott made his personal fortune at the helm of a hospital company that systematically defrauded federal health care programs. The company pleaded guilty to 14 federal felonies and was forced to pay a record $1.7 billion in criminal fines and civil penalties to the Justice Department. In 2009, with financial help from right-wing billionaires Charles and David Koch, Scott used his high-profile opposition to health reform legislation as a springboard to the governorship.

The insurance commissioner has been working for more than a year to deny these rebates to consumers, beginning in September 2010 with a sham hearing that he submitted to HHS as evidence supporting the Florida request. This state hearing was an invitation-only showcase for insurers and brokers to attack the rule, and consumers were denied the right to testify on the record.

"Florida's insurance commissioner should be using this law is to lower premium increases, not to gouge consumers," Rome said. "The goal is to lower premiums not reward companies that can't compete. The governor and the commissioner should spend less time opposing the law and more time implementing it so consumers get premium relief."

To read HCAN's letter to Secretary Sebelius, click here.

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Health Care for America Now is the nation's leading grassroots health care advocacy organization. HCAN led the fight over the past two years to win passage of health reform and to keep Congress from being steamrolled by corporate special interests.

By Ethan Rome - Executive Director, Health Care for America Now

At an Occupy Wall Street event in Minneapolis, last weekend protesters held up a sign that asked, "Had Enough?" A simple question. An expression of outrage. People are rightly and righteously angry, but they're also scared and worried about the future. That's why these protests across the country are supported by the majority of Americans. These are uncertain times and the system has failed them.

Some media and political pundits don't seem to get what the demonstrators are saying, but America's working and middle-class families do: People want their country back. People want to reclaim America before it becomes the unrecognizable property of the super-rich and the big corporations that see our country merely as a source of labor and natural resources to exploit for their gain.

People want jobs, homes, health care and a future. That's why they're fighting back in Minneapolis and cities across the nation. We see this spirit at the Occupy protests and in other struggles, especially in a number of state battles.

Many of us toss around the phrase "American Dream" so much that there's a risk it will lose meaning. For the protesters and the increasing number of folks in "middle America" who support them, the American Dream is real, and it represents one thing above all others - opportunity. While Wall Street sharpshooters wrecked our economy and took away peoples' homes, jobs and so much more, they also took away the future. And the Wall Street profiteers are making the present pretty rotten too.

Beneath the rhetoric about unbridled corporate greed and the grotesque income inequality ruining our country, there is a basic and understandable fear. People of all ages are terrified about finding jobs, affording a home and planning their lives. As it gets harder to afford college, it's becoming less clear what a college education gets you. In America that's a game changer. Getting an education is supposed to mean something, and all of us are supposed to do better than our parents did. That's the core aspiration of the American Dream.

Meanwhile, savings and pensions are turning into artifacts. We can't afford to save, and the jobs we do get don't have pensions. At the same time programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are under relentless attack by right-wing Republicans who answer to their special-interest corporate campaign contributors instead of their constituents back home.

We're at a moment in our history where any detailed list of policy prescriptions understates the kind of change we need. So the chattering class should stop asking the Occupy movement for a 200-point plan. America's middle class and the working poor are under assault by big corporations and the top 1 percent, and the moneyed interests are dangerously close to winning. These attacks are the real deal, and stopping them is what the protesters are talking about. We are all in different parts of the same boat, struggling today and worried about what's next. For people in their 20s, 30s and 40s, books, college degrees and great resumes won't be enough if the big corporations and the 1 percent own everything. That's the agenda - taking back our country for everyone in the 99 percent while we are still hanging on.

The 1 percent and the Republican politicians they own are chipping away at the foundation of one of the greatest inventions we've ever had in this country besides political freedom - the middle class. And led by billionaires like the Koch Brothers, extremists on the right are working to undermine our political democracy as well.

That's why the Occupy protests are so inspiring. Their message is as much what they are doing as what they're saying, and they are making it crystal clear that they've had enough. Activists from established groups on the left should look for ways to support Occupy efforts on the terms of the protesters, from turning out supporters for events to providing cash and supplies.

Of course, progressive organizations already have plenty to do. For example, people in Wisconsin have just launched a recall effort against anti-middle class, pro-corporate Gov. Scott Walker. They want their state back. Those of us involved in the budget debate in Washington, D.C., are following a so-called "super committee" that must protect low-income and middle-class programs like Medicare and Medicaid and ask the 1 percent to pay their fair share instead of perpetuating the status quo. That's not easy in a town dominated by corporate interests that care more about their bottom lines than anything else.

When it comes to state battles, one of the biggest and most important is in Ohio. Hundreds of thousands of teachers, corrections officers, firefighters, nurses, administrative assistants, sanitation workers, social workers and so many others hit the streets to gather petition signatures to repeal Ohio Senate Bill 5. This anti-democratic, anti-middle class legislation takes away the right of workers to bargain for a better life and for jobs, better services and stronger communities for everyone.

We can't have a middle class, a vibrant democracy and a just society without strong unions and a growing labor movement. And we can't have the country that we all deserve without putting people before corporate domination, a demand at the heart of the Occupy movement.

Health Care for America Now has filed a comment with the Department of Health and Human Services urging rejection of Indiana's request for a waiver from health reform rules requiring insurers to spend minimum amounts of premium dollars on medical care rather than profits, executive pay, lobbying, claims denial and marketing.  You can read the full letter to HHS Secretary Sebelius here.

Below are few of the reasons that this waiver is a bad deal for Indiana's consumers:

• Indiana has offered no evidence that any insurers have exited the state or will exit the state or cease offering coverage absent an adjustment.
• Indiana has offered no evidence that, absent an adjustment, enrollees will lose coverage due to insurers leaving the state.
• Indiana has not demonstrated that access to agents and brokers will be disrupted if an adjustment is not granted.
• Alternative coverage is available to Indiana insurance consumers if an insurer exits the state.
• If granted, this adjustment request would cause a substantial loss to Indiana consumers.

Today, the U.S. House of Representatives will vote on H.R. 358, a dangerous anti-women's health bill that undermines access to care.  It is no surprise that House Republicans would rather play politics with women's health than focus on jobs and the economy.

Call your Member of Congress today toll free - (877) 264-HCAN (4226) and tell them to vote NO on H.R. 358.

Here is the letter HCAN signed along with over 50 other organizations vehemently opposing this bill.

Below are some important facts from National Women's Law Center on this issue. You can download the full fact sheet here.

H.R. 358, authored by Representative Joe Pitts (R-PA), threatens women's ability to purchase health insurance that includes abortion coverage and creates dangerous new rules that will harm women's health-and even risk women's lives.

• H.R. 358 would virtually prohibit health plans in the new health insurance exchanges from covering abortion services, even though most health insurance covers it today.
• The bill exempts hospitals from treating women in need of emergency abortion care, even if they will die without it.
• H.R. 358 allows states to exempt health insurance plans from complying with any obligation under the new health law if it offends the insurer's "conscience." For example, an insurer could refuse to cover contraception, the HPV vaccine or any other service.

Here are some messages and talking points from Planned Parenthood on H.R. 358:

• This legislation represents yet another attempt by some Republican leaders to force consideration of policies that would drastically erode women's health and reduce access to basic health care services and information.
• This bill would take comprehensive health coverage away from women, eliminate existing legal protections for women who need an abortion to save their lives, expand current refusal laws that undermine women's health, and create loopholes that states and insurance companies could exploit to undermine the requirement that insurance companies provide birth control with no co-pays.
• Most devastating, the bill eliminates protections for patients seeking care in emergency circumstances and would allow a hospital to deny lifesaving abortion care to a woman, even if a doctor deems it necessary.
• Any politician who votes for this bill is literally putting politics before women's health.
• This is the latest example that Republican leaders prioritize putting politics before women's health, and just can't keep their eyes on the ball when it comes to jobs and the economy.

By Ethan Rome - Executive Director, Health Care for America Now

America's families and small businesses are barely hanging on while the Wall Street-run health insurance profit machines have been jacking up rates and providing less care. That's why it makes sense for Occupy Wall Street protesters to occupy them as well.

In an excellent post on Monday, former health insurance industry insider Wendell Potter suggested that protesters target the Washington, D.C., offices of the insurance industry's lobbying arm. He's right. People should also demonstrate at the corporate offices of the biggest Wall Street-run companies: Aetna and Cigna in Hartford, Conn., WellPoint in Indianapolis, Humana in Louisville and UnitedHealth in Minneapolis.

Much has been said about the banks and credit card companies that are headquartered on Wall Street. The health insurance companies' relentless pursuit of profit and callous disregard for people offers another window into how big corporations have abused people and twisted the economy to serve their own interests.

Health insurance companies make excessive profits, hoard massive amounts of cash, overcharge their customers and give their top executives obscene paychecks.

While we've been dealing with the crushing impact of the worst recession since the Great Depression, the top five health insurance companies have been celebrating boom years thanks to record profits that are expected to total $14 billion in 2011, an astonishing 80% increase since 2008. They did it by raising rates 131% since 1999.

After the insurers gouge us and line their CEOs' pockets, they hoard billions of dollars. As of Dec. 31, 2010, the nation's for-profit and nonprofit health insurance companies were holding $97.3 billion to cover unexpected medical claims - six times more than state regulators require, according to Citigroup Global Markets.

Not surprisingly, insurance company CEOs and executives have been compensated at obscene levels for producing such enormous profits for Wall Street. The chief executives of America's 10 largest health insurance companies were paid $228 million in 2009, up from $33 million in 2000. In that 10-year period, health insurance CEOs received nearly $1 billion in total compensation, and that doesn't even count hundreds of millions more in unreported exercises of stock options during that period. We've got 9% unemployment, falling wages and a declining standard of living, and these guys are taking raises that stagger the imagination.

Meanwhile, millions of Americans are uninsured, and millions more have inadequate coverage. The Affordable Care Act is changing things for the better, but full implementation can't come soon enough. That's why so many of the Occupy Wall Street protesters say health care is a major issue for them. Many don't have insurance, and they're worried they never will. And while Wall Street and the big corporations are wreaking havoc on the country, Republicans in Congress are doing everything they can to make things worse by trying to repeal consumer-friendly reforms like the health care law and bank regulation and trying to eliminate middle-class programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

At the core of the hundreds of Occupy Wall Street protests across the country is anger over the simple fact that the wealthiest 1% and the corporations they own are getting even richer while the rest of us - the 99% who built this country and make it work - are getting poorer. Our perverse economy has produced such extreme income inequality that it is destroying the very essence of America.

The right-wing Republican extremists who work for the 1% like the Koch Brothers think it's the protesters who are destroying America. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor calls the protestors "growing mobs." GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain, who is not burdened by Cantor's restraint, calls the Wall Street demonstrators "un-American."

Some in the media complain that they can't figure out what the protesters want. It seems pretty obvious to me. They want jobs and health care and homes. They want an end to unbridled corporate greed. They want the opportunity to realize their full potential in the greatest country on earth. And they want their political leaders to stand up for them, not the 1%. That's why they started this movement on Wall Street, the financial capital of the world, and that's why the politicians should support the protesters instead of calling them names.

Here are two things you can do to support the movement against corporate greed:

• To find an Occupy event near you, go to the website Occupy Together.
  
• Join The Other 98 Percent and Health Care for America Now in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 4 to protest a fancy gala dinner being held by a Koch Brothers front group. The "American Dream Guerrilla Drive-In" counter-event starts at 8 p.m.

Today HCAN released a statement on Montana Congressman Denny Rehberg's latest plan to devastate middle-class families.

Below is a great piece on this issue by Rick Unger for Mother Jones:

GOP Congressman Equates Purchasing Health Insurance To Buying An Expensive Vacation Home

-By Rick Ungar | Thu Oct. 6, 2011 10:22 AM PDT

Just when you thought it could not get more ridiculous, GOP Congressman and Chairman of the House Appropriations Labor-Health and Human Services subcommittee, Denny Rehberg, has come up with a novel idea. He wants the Congressional super committee to solve $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction by simply killing off the expansion of Medicaid and the subsidies that will open the door to health care for millions of Americans.

In making his argument, Rehberg noted that expanding the Medicaid safety net program, and providing subsidies to low and middle class workers, is akin to the "expensive vacation home" that the average American would choose not to buy if that American was facing a deficit as serious as the nation's.

Before getting to the heart of Rehberg's suggestion, one can't help but wonder what makes the Congressman think that the "average" American can afford an expensive vacation home (or any vacation home for that matter) on what the average American earns, even if that American is not in debt?

But should we be surprised by the Congressman's view of the world? This is the same Denny Rehberg who is not only listed as number 23 on the list of the wealthiest members of Congress, but is the same Congressman Rehberg who had no idea what the minimum wage was in his own state (check out this video as it is priceless.)

Of course, far more important is Rehberg's inability to grasp that getting treatment for cancer or unblocking that clogged artery that is going to make someone a widow or widower is not quite the same as purchasing a vacation home-expensive or otherwise.

And while life might not be worth living for Rep. Rehberg and friends without that idyllic home on the lake, the average American would still prefer to remain alive, thank you very much, which is precisely why Medicaid coverage was extended to more people and subsidies are to be made available to the working poor and middle-class so that medical care would become an option in their lives.

When asked how low and middle class Americans will manage to purchase health care, should the mandate requiring them to do so be found to be Constitutional by SCOTUS, Rehberg answered that Health and Human Services would be able to grant waivers to those who cannot afford coverage without Medicaid or subsidies.

Thus, Rehberg's solution is to simply leave millions of Americans without coverage by way of a waiver. Nice.

Health Care For America Now's Executive Director, Ethan Rome, put it this way:

Rep. Rehberg's proposal is yet another part of the Republican assault on the middle class. Denny Rehberg says that basic health care is a luxury item, as if a mother in Montana taking her children to the doctor or a cancer patient getting treatment is the same as buying 'an expensive vacation home.'

Considering that estimates place the uninsured under age 65 in Montana at somewhere between 16 percent and 20 percent of the population, a number well in excess of the national average, I suspect that Rehberg's fellow Montana might disagree with his approach.

Let's hope they voice that disagreement at the ballot box next November.

Washington, DC - Health Care for America Now (HCAN), the nation's leading grassroots health care advocacy organization, released the following statement from HCAN Executive Director Ethan Rome on Rep. Denny Rehberg's (R-MT) proposal that the Super Committee eliminate the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion and subsidies to help consumers buy insurance:

"Rep. Rehberg's proposal is yet another part of the Republican assault on the middle class. Denny Rehberg says that basic health care is a luxury item, as if a mother in Montana taking her children to the doctor or a cancer patient getting treatment is the same as buying ‘an expensive vacation home.'

"Any cuts to these essential programs would endanger the health of our parents, kids and neighbors, put the livelihoods of hardworking Americans at risk and hurt small businesses. Montana needs leaders who will create jobs, not take a meat ax to their communities.

"What Rehberg wants to do would devastate families and businesses in rural areas, where consumers pay more for health insurance and receive less care. Rehberg would stifle entrepreneurs trying to start new businesses and create jobs. Denny Rehberg has the wrong priorities.

"The only way the Super Committee can pass a rational, balanced plan is to ask corporations and the super-rich to pay their fair share of taxes, not to cut health care for kids, seniors and working families. Instead of asking the top 1% of taxpayers to pitch in and support their country, Rehberg wants to take health care away from the other 99% and make it harder for small businesses to survive. It's time for Denny Rehberg to stop siding with insurance and drug companies and other big corporations and do what's right for Montana and the nation."

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Health Care for America Now is the nation's leading grassroots health care advocacy organization. HCAN led the fight over the past two years to win passage of health reform and to keep Congress from being steamrolled by corporate special interests.

For Immediate Release - OCTOBER 6, 2011
Contact: Avram Goldstein 202-587-1634
agoldstein@healthcareforamericanow.org

In case you haven't seen HCAN in the Washington Post: Anger of "Occupy Wall Street" supporters fueled by concerns about lack of affordable health care.

Today on Capitol Hill several Republican Members of Congress participated in political theater hosted by a right wing health care reform “repeal” group, Restore America’s Voice Foundation. GOP Senators and Congressmen accepted what they claimed to be 1.6 million signatures calling for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. But 1.6 million isn’t the number these politicians care about, and it certainly wasn’t why they participated. The real number is $12 million - that’s the combined total of campaign dollars these Congressmen have taken from the Health Care Industry:

Sen. David Vitter (R-LA)          $1,543,606

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT)              $101.600

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC)           $1,308,702

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT)          $3,239,594

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI)         $347,526

Rep. Joseph Pitts (R-PA)          $929,544

Rep. Steve King (R-IA)             $128,050

Rep. Tom Price (R-GA)            $2,893,682

Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX)   $1,826,348

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH)           $301,470

Source: Center for Responsive Politics