Health Care For America Now

Health insurance companies are exempt from federal antitrust laws — laws that protect commerce from monopolies and unfair business practices in most other types of markets. As a result, health insurers have become highly concentrated and premiums have soared. There is movement on Capitol Hill to remove this exemption, but the best way to quickly infuse competition into health insurance markets across the country is with a strong, national public health insurance plan option.

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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.

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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.

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America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) is claiming Medicare "has had virtually zero innovation since its inception." A look at the facts, however, shows that Medicare leads and private insurers follow. AHIP itself has in the past admitted that, “Private insurers will take a close look at what Medicare is doing, with an eye to adopting similar policies.” I don’t know about you, but I smell desperation in the air as insurers struggle to discredit the idea of creating a strong, national public health insurance plan option.

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The fact that insurance companies continually break regulations is one of the reasons we need a public health insurance plan to compete with them. It may not keep the insurance companies from continuing to do everything in their power to avoid people who need care, but it will give us all a safe harbor — of stability, accountability, financial security and efficiency — from insurance company abuses.

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How much extra value are we getting for the $149 billion we will give Medicare Advantage plans in overpayments over the next ten years? Fourteen cents on the dollar. Wow, what a deal — for the insurance companies!

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A new survey found that 71 percent of people think members of Congress are paying too little attention to what people like them are saying about changes to the health care system. And the people were proven right when amendments that would have added a public health insurance plan option — which the vast majority of the people support — were defeated yesterday in the Senate Finance Committee. But it’s not too late to make your voice heard. Call your Senators and demand a public health insurance option.

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Much of the debate on the question of affordability is focused on how to make health insurance affordable for individuals. That framing of the problem misses the true challenge: making quality health care — not just insurance — affordable for us all, as patients, employers, consumers and taxpayers. Once we understand that is the true challenge, it becomes clear why we need a public health insurance plan option. Call your senators today to demand that option.

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The New York Times describes the trigger as "a possible compromise under which the government would offer its own health plan only if private insurers failed to provide affordable coverage." By that criterion, it's time to pull the trigger! Don't be fooled. The trigger is a bullet aimed straight at the heart of the public health insurance plan option.

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Today I participated in a "Big Insurance: Sick of It" in New York City, in front of the offices of the second largest health insurance company in the country. We came to say enough to insurance company hegemony over our health care. We came to say that "we the people" have to come before their profits. We came to represent the nearly 80 percent of Americans who want to be given a public health insurance plan option.

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