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Insurers Make Case for Public Option
By demanding that the Baucus health-care bill toughen the coercive penalties to force young Americans to sign up for private insurance, industry lobbyists have inadvertently made the most dramatic argument to date for including a strong public option in any health reform law.
After all, the bill sponsored by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Montana, already was widely regarded as industry friendly. It had scrapped the public option, a lower-cost government-run insurance alternative that the industry hated because it would create strong competitive pressures.
Plus, there appeared to be plenty of goodies for the industry. The Baucus bill, which is expected to clear the Finance Committee on Tuesday, would impose "an individual mandate" on Americans, requiring them to buy insurance or face a government fine. The bill also contained government subsidies to help modest-income citizens pay for their insurance.
So, the industry stood to gain an estimated 27 million new customers and get federal subsidies to boot.
But industry lobbyists began to send signals last week that they wanted more. They feared that the government fines would not be coercive enough to force many healthy young Americans to sign up for insurance, meaning that many new customers might be just the ones the industry doesn't want -- people who are sick and need medical attention.
Without more severe government penalties on young Americans, the lobbyists warned that the industry would jack up rates on everyone.
"Between 2010 and 2019 the cumulative increases in the cost of a typical family policy under this reform proposal will be approximately $20,700 more than it would be under the current system," said Karen Ignagni, president and chief executive of America's Health Insurance Plans, the industry's lobbying arm which commissioned the price study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers. [Washington Post, Oct. 12, 2009]
In other words, the private health insurance industry is demanding more concessions in the reform bill -- particularly stiffer fines on Americans who balk at signing up for health insurance -- or the industry will make health insurance even more expensive for Americans.
Yet, while the industry may view its new hardball tactics as smart politics, its threats of sharply higher insurance premiums may backfire. The admission that the industry can't control costs without greater government coercion on citizens may end up simply dramatizing the value of a strong public option.
The public option, which could cut costs by piggybacking on the existing Medicare bureaucracy, was always the one possible route to substantial savings. Based on Medicare's experience, a public option could operate with an overhead of around two percent compared to the 20 percent or more that private insurers take for administrative costs, executive salaries and profits.
If a public option were available to individual consumers and small businesses -- as four bills that have passed other congressional committees call for -- then customers could get coverage at a lower price and thus the mandate to buy insurance would be less burdensome.
Rather than strong-arming Americans to get private insurance by imposing stiffer fines, Congress might find the public option a far less draconian alternative, one that would enable more people to afford health insurance and thus make the need for penalties less necessary.
That, of course, was the reason private insurers worked so hard to demonize the public option as "a government takeover" of medicine and lobbied aggressively to make sure it was rejected by the Senate Finance Committee.
Yet, even with the public option stripped from the Baucus bill, Congress finds the industry ratcheting up the pressure to get more concessions or to kill the reform package altogether.
The industry's move, however, represents a gamble, in that Democrats might finally recognize the potential for their own political suicide if a new health-reform law turns the federal government into the enforcer for an industry that has long prospered from the business of paying as few medical bills of sick Americans as possible.
Rather than using fines to muscle more citizens into the arms of private insurers, the Democrats might finally rebel against the lobbyists and make sure that a strong public health-insurance option is available as an alternative to private policies. Just the outcome that the industry feared most.
- Posted in
42 Comments so far
Show AllSo what we have is a medical mafia.
My thought exactly. And I agree with Parry that the insurance cabal has gone too far -- not that our lily-livered Congress will necessarily react in the way he hopes, but that the cabal finally gone so far as to show the gun and blackmail note. They're quite openly trying to hold the welfare of the country hostage to their profit-taking. In my book, that falls somewhere between treason and terrorism.
Even if Congress doesn't immediately react as they should, I'm hoping that enough ordinary Americans will recognize this thuggish threat for what it is to light a fire under them.
Definition: Extortion
When a person or organization unlawfully obtains either money, property or services from a person, entity, or institution, through coercion.
Looks like we have legalized extortion here if you ask me...
Fat chance that our bought nnd paid for Congress would rebel. More likely that they will use this flawed study as cover for opposition to reform. That is why it was written. That is how it will be used. The only way out is to vote our corrupt Congress out. Let them know that the more money they take from coprporate interests, the less likely they are to be elected. Don't vote for the incumbent.
Voting in new politicians before Campaign Finance Reform
would bring in new paid actors hired by the corporate rich
to protect excessive wealth.
It’s the “Catch 22,” no way to have Campaign Finance Reform
without honest politicians, and no way to have honest politicians
without Campaign Finance Reform.
Anyone for a MASS REBELLION?
I'm in!
Hell, it's been 233 years since the last one.
Oops - I saw REBELLION, but my brain said REVOLUTION.
Buy the hospitals!
Contract the supplies!
This would bring down the cost for everybody!
Personnel would be the only people to charge the insurance companies for their services.
Whether Single-Payer or Public Option, this would slash the cost of medical care so much we could pay for it with what we spend now.
I'm afraid your idea is over a hundred years old,
old as our first community hospitals
PUBLIC OPTION ---- A SMOKE SCREEN
(1) The corporate rich own the medical industry,
all of mass media and hire most in Congress as paid actors. The goal
being capitalism, the unregulated freedom to compete for excessive wealth.
(2) And so, in this healthcare debate Congress has but one function,
to give the illusion that reform will lower healthcare costs for you,
when the only goal is to milk the maximum dollars from you.
(3) Absolutely impossible is it for our capitalist Congress to ever destroy
any capitalist industry. Least of all capitalist medicine, which is producing
twice the profit of any other industry in America.
(4) Both of the reforms that the public has been brainwashed into having a
desire for, Public Option and Single Payer, would totally destroy our
capitalist medical industry. Again an impossible thing for a capitalist
Congress to ever do.
(5) First step in healthcare reform should have been done by President Obama
last January, namely what has never been done, establish 100% oversight and
honest regulation of a totally corrũpt medical industry that operates in absolute secrecy.
(6) Second step should be the elimination of all profit in the medical industry,
Medicare being an excellent way to accomplish this.
For earning a profit off the hurting of the sick, surely this would ruin the morals
of the most honest man on earth.
Good points!
i recently explained to an old lady having "outpatient" rehabilitation treatment through a combination of her medicaire and private insurance (which she said:"it's very good") -
what is happening. of course her concerns were for herself...and that she was satisfied...
but also wondered that "i was hearing that the government will cut services and we can't choose"...and such nonsense .
so i began to explain to her , and showed the comparisons with canada, england, france, switzerland. etc...
a week later - i met her again - and she said:
"i was thinking about what you said...I think we need a SINGLE PAYER...like our medicaire...we should be willing to RAISE the taxes to cover everyone...and get RID of private insurance industry".
she realized as i had explained that whiel SHE might live long enough only to have the good "coverage" she has for what were really minor old-age ailments...until one day serious illness hits...
there millions more going bankrupt BECAUSE of their private insurance..and that her own grandchildren and their children will one day suffer as a conequence of the "Private industry" health care in america.
so i baiscally summed up for her:
"the private health industry coverage should NEVER have been allowed to exist in america, it should NEVER have been permitted decades ago...and it is now bankrupting the nation, along with its wars".
and she voiced firmly, as she knew other people were hearing us:
"I AGREE with THAT!".
Health Insurers’ Executive Pay (2008)
Axis Capital Holdings Limited
John R. Charman
$41.6 M
W. R. Berkley Corp.
William R. Berkley
$29.2 M
Aetna
Ronald A. Williams
$24.3 M
MetLife
C. Robert Henrikson
$20.8 M
Chubb Corp.
John D. Finnegan
$20.1 M
CNA Financial Corp.
Stephen W. Lilienthal
$18.3 M
American International Group
Martin J. Sullivan
$14.7 M
Everest Re Group
Joseph V. Taranto
$14.6 M
Commerce Group
Gerald Fels
$13.2 M
Prudential Financial
John R. Strangfeld
$12.9 M
Cigna
H. Edward Hanway
$12.2 M
Wellpoint
Angela Braly
$9.8 M
Coventry
Dale Wolf
$9 M
Health Net
Jay Gellert
$4.4 M
Humana
Michael McCallister
$4.7 M
United Health Group
Stephen J. Hemsley
$3.24 M
http://unsilentgeneration.com/2009/10/12/1911
What a shame it is that "insurers" can make the case for "public option" and yet the public cannot and will not. Yesterday, I came across a post on healthcare where I was touched by JWVerez's description of a young couple struggling to stay alive and well thanks to job insecurity in the midst of war vs health care spending battles. This prompted me to share my recent experience yesterday with campaigners for both gubernatorial candidates on the issue of health care. Below is the long description I wrote about my thoughts on health care being a national security issue and why the terrorist "insurers" have won:
=================================================================
Just today, when both the Deeds and Mcdonnell campaigns came knocking at my door, I did not hesitate to ask both campaigns what they plan to do on health care, transportation woes, mountaintop removal, jobs, and other economic and environmental issues. The folks from the Deeds campaign gave very few answers and then talked again too much about gender and minority issues even when I asked them about the economic issues. At the most, they would say that Deeds plans to keep jobs in Virginia. I would ask them exactly what kind of jobs and they would still say the same thing and give no answer. I asked them about what Deeds plans to do about the transportation woes and told them straight up that public transportation is lacking and that more people are getting to work stressed out due to excessive traffic jams both in Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia. They said that he has a plan but that its effects won't materialize until after Deeds leaves office which is absurd. They then try to change the subject to abortion and then I fire back and tell them that if a women gets pregnant on the highway and is stuck in traffic jams with the driver, what the hell will "abortion" solve ? They don't want to answer these simple questions.
The Mcdonnell campaign people were just as disgusting. Ask them about health care for all Virginians and they would say that people should be allowed to choose their own private health care providers. Try to ask them about the unemployed and those whose employers don't provide coverage and they complain about jobs being lost if VA government takes over. Ask them about fixing transportation woes and they argue about the need to cut back on public transportation as if it existed making up lies about that being the cause of state deficits. Their other solution is to make as much of I-64, I-95, and I-66 HOV only for rush hours and shove most of the traffic into the city and country roads as if that will solve anything other than stress more people out and increase health care costs.
I asked both these campaigns plenty more questions and most of it was related to the economy and health care at large. The result is all of us Virginians are already losers because Democrat or Republican, we will get the same irresponsible state government just like this entire nation gets the same kind of irresponsible national government. I would like to add that this is happening in most states even as we speak. I know I have said a lot and beyond this article but I want to make one thing clear. We will continue to lose on the fight for a better health care system and controlling military spending as long as we continue to fail to take on our politicians not only in Washington but also on our local and state levels. Of course health care is a national security issue but until we learn to realize that we cannot allow wars and privilege to dictate who gets the best health care and that we cannot afford to ignore our state and local politicians, we the people will be burned alive by the system as it stands.
================================================================
many, many years ago -- although i did not yet have as much "information" or awareness of the "innards" and how the american "system" really works - i often had the sense, just the impression, and told friends, that :
THE USA system or way of life is really one about a carefully wrapped, pleasantly packaged Life of make-believe prosperity, insecure "security" (such as insurance) , and glorified slavery (such as "hard working american" under the corporatism) .
I think my first impressions - long ago, of america , from direct experience - was correct, after all.
"THE USA system or way of life is really one about a carefully wrapped, pleasantly packaged Life of make-believe prosperity, insecure "security" (such as insurance) , and glorified slavery (such as "hard working american" under the corporatism) ."
Add to it the fact that the ruling class finds a way to successfully pit the middle class against the lower class by creating the illusion of scraps as "wealth" and seeing to it that the middle class continues to gleefully depend on the ruling class and trash the lower class. "Security" is just a bullsh** word. I find it hard to believe myself tolerating some of it time and again and yet the nagging feeling remains that if I give up, someone else will immediately take my place so back to square one. Dealing with this broken system is as easy as trying to control the flow of volcanic lava in a city.
Since when would sane individuals rely upon a criminal conspiracy named Congress? When they are effing idiots. That's when.
Repeat after me: this is a tax increase
For that veil to drop and show the bald face of greed on behalf of the insurance companies was priceless. I think if they got enough rope....but seriously, it is always a great turn of events when one of the players, actors, whatever, goes beserk and shows their true nature, let's just hope Average Joe 6-pack wakes from his stupor to pay attention, and demand single payer, everybody in , nobody out, except without the exorbitant profit gleaned from our health $$$ .. . those listed above will be denied their 'ill gotten' gains...(call a waaaaambulance)!!
Looks like nothing gets done unless its backed by Big Money. Why won't progressive politicians introduce a bill to get money out of politics?
Parry sez: "Without more severe government penalties on young Americans, the lobbyists warned that the industry would jack up rates on everyone."
***
Except that's not how the announcement was framed.
"This reform" will jack up the rates ... not the insurers.
Faux Noise and the rest of the Ministry of Propaganda outlets will further refine the culprit to "Obama and congressional democrats will jack up your ... etc, etc.
The public is NOT to be informed of the methods and motives of its corporate masters.
another day...another hardworking american family -- insured - and then "go and die" ...
and bankruptcy looming :
it makes one cry just reading what is being done to americans by
"Insurers"......
this is just not RIGHT..it's not right at all.
===============
Stephanie Smith
CNN Medical Producer
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WEST PALM BEACH, Florida (CNN) -- Leslie Elder's eyelids fluttered open, and through the fog of pain medication, she saw the emergency room doctors pull back the curtain in her room.
Leslie and Jim Elder say they were forced to cancel their health insurance.
Leslie and Jim Elder say they were forced to cancel their health insurance.
She could tell that the news was bad.
"They didn't have to say a word. I knew from their faces that something wasn't right," said Elder, 60, who hours earlier had stumbled into the ER with a stabbing pain in her abdomen. "Then one doctor said, 'Your right kidney ... it's breaking apart. You have a tumor ... and you also have a tumor in your left kidney.' "
The words "You have a tumor" were not new to Elder; her grim financial situation was.
Elder had cancer twice before -- in 1988, doctors found a tumor in her right breast, and in 2001, they found one in her left breast -- except back then, she was insured. By the time she learned that she had kidney cancer in September 2005, she was uninsured.
"All I could think of was 'Oh, my god, I'm going to go broke. We'll be living in a cardboard house,' " Elder said. " 'How am I going to do this?' It was the most honest feeling of powerlessness."
Insurance conflict
Elder and her husband, Jim, say their health insurance carrier, Nationwide Insurance, forced them into an impossible situation by raising the rates on their policy over several years. Eventually, they were forced to cancel.
"Nationwide denies any inference that the company inappropriately raised rates for the coverage that was provided from 1987 until the time the Elders canceled the policy," spokeswoman Liz Christopher said in a statement.
The Elders are broke and on the cusp of bankruptcy because of medical bills, and they're not alone. A study published in the June issue of the American Journal of Medicine found that in 2007, 62 percent of personal bankruptcies were because of medical debts. The same study indicated that in 1981, only 8 percent of bankruptcy filings could be traced to medical bills.
"Health insurance premiums track directly with the underlying cost of medical care," said Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for America's Health Insurance Plans, which represents 1,300 health insurance carriers in the United States. "As the cost of providing care increases, premiums increase accordingly."
The Elders boil it down to health insurance companies putting profits ahead of human life. Video Watch more on the Elders' struggle »
"The insurance companies are choosing who will live and who will die," Leslie Elder said.
Nationwide Insurance says it did not break any law by increasing the Elders' insurance premium.
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"Health insurance rates were and are highly regulated by various state insurance departments, and any premium increases for the Elders and other policyholders would have been made in full compliance with state laws in effect at that time," Christopher said.
The Florida Department of Insurance Regulation, which oversees companies like Nationwide, said in a statement, "There is no law that limits the amount of rate requested by an insurer." Insurance officials add that their office reviews all rate requests, ensuring that the requests are not excessive or discriminatory.
The Elders bristle at the notion that their experience could be cast as anything but "excessive" and "discriminatory."
Health care bills before the Senate and House are designed, in part, to rid the market of health care discrimination, especially as it relates to pre-existing conditions like Elder's cancer.
Zirkelbach says the industry agrees with removing pre-existing conditions from consideration for pricing policies but stresses that reform should not come by way of raising taxes or cutting benefits for other programs like Medicare.
The Obama administration has said repeatedly that health care reform would not cut benefits or raise taxes.
The Elders are not hopeful that health care reform -- even if it excludes pre-existing condition clauses from health insurance policies -- will help them any time soon.
According to the bill currently before the House, it will be 2014 before self-employed families like them will actually have access to health insurance. By then, Elder will be near eligibility for Medicare.
While the debate in Congress continues, Elder says she is waiting anxiously -- waiting for reform, and for her cancer to come back.
A contentious relationship
The Elders did not always have such a contentious relationship with their health insurance carrier, and they were not always broke. In fact, before their insurance troubles, they were solidly middle-class business owners.
However, in 1988, things began changing. It was the year of Elder's first breast cancer diagnosis. When the family's plan required payment of a $250 deductible and a 20 percent share of the costs of medical care, the Elders could afford it.
Years after that first diagnosis, things started getting shaky. Jim Elder says the premiums crept up slowly at first and then more dramatically.
"You do ask why, why, why," Jim Elder said. "Why are we stuck with all these huge bills when we're supposedly covered?"
A recent Kaiser Family Foundation study examining U.S. health insurance policies generally found that from 1999 to 2009, the average family premium more than doubled. The Elders say that over the life of their Nationwide Insurance policy, their premiums nearly quadrupled.
The Elders believe that their health insurance premiums soared higher than those of the average family because of Leslie's previous cancer diagnosis.
"What is the message here? Survive cancer but then go drop dead because we can't make any money off you anymore?" Leslie Elder asked. "[The insurance companies] figure, 'You're useless. Get lost.' "
article from cnn continued (i posted in the wrong order)
=================
Nationwide says, "While we're empathetic to the Elders' situation, we stand by the policy coverages provided to the Elders while they were customers."
To cope with high premiums, the Elders played a precarious, yet common, game. They increased their deductible to offset the high premiums. By the time Leslie Elder got breast cancer for a second time, in 2001, the family's deductible was up to $5,000.
What happened next would send shock waves through the Elder household.
"As I'm recuperating, I receive $21,000 of bills that I was responsible for," Leslie Elder said. Under the Elders' policy with Nationwide they did, in fact, owe so much, in part because of rising health care costs, and in part because their deductible was now so high.
She was stunned and confused -- not just about the bills but about how they were going to pay. What still confounds Leslie and Jim Elder: How the cost of medical care, and medical insurance, went sky high in just over a decade.
Health Library
* MayoClinic.com: Coping with a cancer diagnosis
* MayoClinic.com: Types of breast cancer
Late in 2001, the Elders were scrambling for affordable coverage. They dropped their policy with Nationwide Insurance and signed up for a more affordable policy with Aetna, by starting a group policy including employees in a small business they were running at the time. Eventually, Aetna would increase the Elders' premium to nearly $1,000 per month. It was too much. In 2005, the Elders dropped their health insurance policy for the second time.
"I sat down and seriously thought about it for a long time and said, 'I'm not going to do this,' " Leslie Elder said. "I am not going to pay. Never mind 'I'm not going to'; there was no way I could."
In a statement, Aetna said that Leslie Elder's previous cancer diagnoses were not the culprit for the rate increase.
Although the company did not cite a specific reason for the increased rate, Cynthia Michener, an Aetna spokeswoman said: "There can be other contributing factors to rate increases for small business policies, including, for example, the aggregate cost of the entire pool of small business policies in the state."
Zirkelbach said, "Everybody who has health care coverage should have the peace of mind that their coverage is going to be there when they need it. We have proposed to eliminate pre-existing condition exclusions entirely so that everybody has peace of mind that coverage will be there, that they won't be paying based on their health status."
Through it all, there was one bright spot: A generous family member paid the more than $80,000 in hospital bills stacked up during Leslie Elder's 2005 kidney cancer treatment. Still, the family is struggling to pay down the bill of more than $21,000 from 2001.
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Leslie Elder says that even if she could afford it, because of her pre-existing condition, she is "uninsurable." Without coverage, she cannot afford follow-up exams for cancer, so Elder has no idea whether her cancer has come back. In a strange way, she says, not knowing is better.
"I don't think I could bear to listen to those words again. ... 'You have cancer,' " Elder said. "I've said to my husband, if I start to get sick, just set me up with a nice pill cocktail on a beach, because nobody cares. That's the message you hear every day from insurance companies.
Soon health care will be a luxury for only those few that can afford it, the CEOs of the Banks, Financial Institutions and Insurance companies. Heckofajob, Mr.Baucus. In addition of that it wouldn't surprize anyone if Time makes you man of the year. A fitting end to another glitzy year for the top 10%. They still have their tax breaks, their off shore accounts, their unregulated free for all called banking, and now a grand scheme for more of the same only better for the insurance industry. Don'tcha just love it? And we do not get squat! Oh, yeah, we get the deficit, the lousy education, a melting climate, a crumbling infrastructure, genetically modified food, the wars, the jobless market and a lot of neighbors,if not ourselves, without any place to live. Let's add Nancy and Harry to the Max B's private club.
Soon health care will be a luxury for only those few that can afford it, the CEOs of the Banks, Financial Institutions and Insurance companies. Heckofajob, Mr.Baucus. In addition of that it wouldn't surprize anyone if Time makes you man of the year. A fitting end to another glitzy year for the top 10%. They still have their tax breaks, their off shore accounts, their unregulated free for all called banking, and now a grand scheme for more of the same only better for the insurance industry. Don'tcha just love it? And we do not get squat! Oh, yeah, we get the deficit, the lousy education, a melting climate, a crumbling infrastructure, genetically modified food, the wars, the jobless market and a lot of neighbors,if not ourselves, without any place to live. Let's add Nancy and Harry to the Max B's private club.
Sioux Rose
Am I the only one that takes umbrage with this idea of referring to insurance as an INDUSTRY? What does it make, build, or create? It's a sophisticated temple of paper/money changers! There is NO product they produce! Like the corner drug pusher man, they just exist to take their cut. The rest is a complex infrastructure of jobs that mostly exist to make doctors' lives an unbearable maze of forms, and patients lives a fight-to-the death-for-coverage set of battles!
This middle man needs to be removed from the health equation and pronto! Like the MIC, it demands "hush" money. Like an addict, accustomed to its fixed dosage, the thought of losing revenue to something as humane as actual persons obtaining necessary medical treatments without this pox on all our houses taking their "cut," will not be tolerated!
Just as money was given to the banks rather than nationalizing them, here, too, the remedy is to buy the hospitals and offer those who wish to stay on board fixed salaries. Let it ALL come from a tax base! And the insurers can cover the cosmetic tummy tucks, face lifts, and other extras! They already have us over a barrel with auto insurance, boat insurance, property insurance, and God knows what else! In every instance I've faced a loss, insurance has found a way NOT to cover it. Either they argue that my deductible should eat the loss, or they have arcane language in place to ease them out of their side of the bargain.
The moneychangers now fully own the temples!
"Am I the only one that takes umbrage with this idea of referring to insurance as an INDUSTRY? What does it make, build, or create?"
By the dictionary definition of industry, yes. There are loose definitions of the word industry and that's where it fits in. Here is what I am referring to:
industry
1. the aggregate of manufacturing or technically productive enterprises in a particular field, often named after its principal product: the automobile industry; the steel industry.
2. any general business activity; commercial enterprise: the Italian tourist industry.
3. trade or manufacture in general: the rise of industry in Africa.
4. the ownership and management of companies, factories, etc.: friction between labor and industry.
5. systematic work or labor.
6. energetic, devoted activity at any work or task; diligence: Her teacher praised her industry.
7. the aggregate of work, scholarship, and ancillary activity in a particular field, often named after its principal subject: the Mozart industry.
8. Archaeology. an assemblage of artifacts regarded as unmistakably the work of a single prehistoric group.
Definitions 2,3, and 4 I see as the loose ones. #5 and #6 could be considered part of the definitions when the destructive nature of the insurance industries are evaluated. I dunno about 7 and 8.
Definition 1 couldn't possibly include insurance since there's nothing constructive I see from them either.
Yesterday, when I was approached by people campaigning for the Republican candidate for governor of VA, while discussing health care, I was given ridiculous arguments about insurance companies creating jobs and that state sponsored single payer would destroy those jobs in the state. They claimed that tens of thousands of jobs would be lost.
I hear you on the ripoffs from all types of insurance companies. Perhaps the only things they do create is a model for rich crooks to follow, frustrations, and god knows what other bad abstractions. I'm not sure what else they could create from it.
maxpayne sez: "Yesterday, when I was approached by people campaigning for the Republican candidate for governor of VA, while discussing health care, I was given ridiculous arguments about insurance companies creating jobs and that state sponsored single payer would destroy those jobs in the state."
***
No problem. Hire all the displaced claim deniers to positions in the single-payer system.
The re-training would be a piece of cake: "OK, you know the part where you used to say, 'No.'? ... Now you say 'Yes'."
Interesting. I didn't quite think of that. I wished telling them were as easy as a piece of cake but it will taking enormous convincing to get them out of this madness.
It would appear as if the "Health" insurance industry's greed has knee-capped their public relations radar (that, and listening too much to their beltway lobbyists, whom are looking to pump up the billable hours). If so, it should serve a potent example to the other industries who are looking on at this struggle, especially oil. Do not let your greed get the better of you, or all your astro turf efforts will be in vain.
"Between 2010 and 2019 the cumulative increases in the cost of a typical family policy under this reform proposal will be approximately $20,700 more than it would be under the current system"
The profit beast roars loudly that it will increase our health insurance bills 154% next decade from $13,375/yr/family to $34,075/yr/family, if legislators fail to meet its most recent demands. The profit beast wants legislators to sharply increase fines to push more uninsured to buy the profitized insurance. And the profit beast wants legislators to drop the proposed windfall profits tax.
If the profit beast follows through on its threat, and other countries hold their healthcare costs down, and congress fails to reign in the profit beast, then in 2019 USans will be paying not twice, but FIVE times what others pay. Many Usans who go along with business as usual will be skeptical that the profit beast actually issued such a blatant threat to illegally inflate/fix prices 500%. They will try to rationalize their personal contracts with the profit beast and defend their USan pride and their elite votes by suggesting that USan healthcare quality and capability will advance by a similar amount, preserving the value in the exchange.
In fact, the USA already ranks 37th in the WHO health index, far behind other countries that deliver twice the value. The profit beast's latest roar should give USan a hesitation to continue feeding it, and as Parry suggests, USans should rally around a single payer "Medicare for all" program to keep the profit beast off our backs. There's plenty more USans can do. Generally shift our exchange/association away from all power centers and toward our local communities to bring the economic/political power back home where it belongs, reduce economic activity and work weeks by a factor of two, reduce our fossil and carbon footprints and all the rest of the social/environmental destruction.
There will be NO health care for all until all of the insurance companies are forced out of business. They are killers, terrorists, and extortionists. They lie to Congress and Congress knows that they are being lied to. Remember, Congress has been bought and paid for by the insurance lobby.
We do NOT need health insurance. We need health care. That will only happen with Single Payer. Single Payer will save lives and it will also save money. There will be no exorbitant CEO salaries. There will be no need for Wall Street profits. There will be reduced administrative costs with one single payer.
SINGLE PAYER SAVES LIVES. SINGLE PAYER SAVES MONEY.
AMEN Rosemarie.
PS: Can I write your name in for independent candidate for governor of VA? I can't stand Deeds or Mcdonnell. Neither support single payer for VA and I think you'd make a swell governor. This year, no one is running outside Democrat or Republican unlike previous gubernatorial elections.
I agree 100% with all your points, except saying single-payer isn't a form of insurance is splitting hairs. Single payer isn't so much about how health care is delivered, as how it's paid for. It doesn't really matter if you call it insurance. It serves the same function. And it does so much cheaper and more equitably.
"Let's add Nancy and Harry to the Max B's private club."
No, instead, let's take away Mr. Baucus's health insurance along with the benefits of the Office of Attending Physician and do the same for all congress motherfuckers and other elected federal government officials (including Mr. Obama) and let them live within the for profit system the rest of us must until single payer is not only proposed, but passed.
We call some of the crooks "Banksters", and rightly so.
How about adopting a more descriptive name for the private health insurance industry and call the "PIRATE Insurance" ?
I like it! Pirate Insurance it is!
It seems only commentary in places like Common Dreams or liberal media like Keith Olbermann saw what the insurance industry threatened yesterday as a threat.
Everyone else is talking about "undercutting" the claims made by the insurance industry to justify their preemptive attack.
The insurance industry behaves like the mafia -- "If yous don't pays us, something bad might happen to yous."
I'm confused...
What's to prevent us all from outright rejecting what the government is offereing, and then forming our own nation-wide single payer system.
It seems to me that if enough doctors, health care professionsals, and other intelligent/motivated people want single payer - we ought to be able to construct such a system.
Why not ignore this silly and useless congress/president if they will not provide what the majority wants?
YES. I've been saying this for four months now. Insurance is just a way of spreading risk over many insured. 'Single-payer' is just a further way of spreading risk over your entire lifetime: once in you lose the choice to get out (and they lose the choice to toss you out if you get sick). This lack of choice makes single payer kinda like a public utility. You buy water or gas from this company, which has a gov't granted monopoly to sell water or gas in your municipality. In return for its monopoly status, it is required not to rip you off. Which, in the case of health insurance, would make the rates so much lower it's a win-win for most people.
I'm calling on people to STRIKE, until the gov't gives them the chance to choose a single-payer plan (like Medicare, but not, since Medicare has problems of its own). This is a one time choice: if you choose in, you are stuck with it for the rest of your life. If you choose OUT, ditto. Many Americans won't go for it: but then they are stuck with the current private system, which will dump them the moment they get sick. How screwed up are Americans? HALF THE COUNTRY WOULD STILL CHOOSE THE PRIVATE SYSTEM IF GIVEN THE CHANCE. That dumb half of America DESERVES to be ripped off by private insurance corporations. But the smart half of America DESERVES better. There is nothing in single payer that REQUIRES universal healthcare; that is a separate issue. (single payer offers so many savings that universal healthcare is actually possible, however, but again that is a separate issue).
We need to just NOT show up for work on Jan 15, 2010. And, if we don't get our opportunity to buy into a single-payer plan, NOT show up for work Feb 15. And so on, once a month, until the gov't breaks down and offers us this eminently sensible alternative (let the stupid half of America figure it out on their own, usually by getting sick and going bankrupt). Since HALF of America actually wants access to a single payer plan, we wouldn't have to lose many days of work before the gov't gave us what we want: a choice. There's a great deal of power in our numbers. 'Make me do the right thing', said FDR. This is one of those moments.
I've been calling the Health Ins. Industry part of the Health Care Mafia for quite some time. They justified the label the other day by basically becoming what they are extortionists. They finally took off the mask and just stuck a gun in Congress' and our face and demanded we do their bidding and hurry it up , or fucking else! They let all of us know that it's they NOT us who really have the power to HURT people here BIG TIME!
In case you haven't been over to HuffPo, check out this headline:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/14/insurance-companies-emerg_n_320289.html
Here is my comment in answer to someone else's comment:
"I was surprised nobody in these comments raised this yesterday, but it was my first thought. I never had that WTF moment, either. As commenter above said, this is a red herring. This is to make absolutely 100% sure there are mandates, stiff fines and no public option -- nothing robust and not even a sliver. Let's see if Obama, Rahm and Baucus can win an Academy Award for their performance of "outrage" and "anger" at their pals the insurance companies."
Here is the only comment that latched onto this:
"They're trying to leave the impression the Baucus bill is AGAINST the insurance companies. In reality, the insurance companies wrote the bill. This is a deceptive article. My guess is the insurance companies actually wrote this article too."
And then one person commented below this that yes, it's a red herring to distract us, and then I left my comment, which hasn't been approved yet -- and probably won't be because I'm lumping Obama in with Rahm and Baucus.
As long as you're just whining on the net and not hitting the streets by the millions every day, you're just wimps, as far as Europe's opinion about you people is concerned.