American Health Care Reform NEWS
Health Insurance is NOT THE SAME as health care
OBAMA IS GEARING UP FOR A FIGHT!
Mr. President, the American People are with you.
Kick AHIP & PhRMA in their butts!
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Obama lays out his health insurance reform vision
Posted on August 22nd, 2009 No commentsThe public option is NOT dead. Obama is not weakening on his position. I truly believe he will get a much needed public option to be offered side-by-side with private health insurance plans. That is what is called uniquely American. A “menu” of choices. And if we can’t have single payer national health insurance, then please, give the American people the CHOICE to be insured privately or by a public plan.
Watch and listen to President Obama lay out his health insurance reform vision which includes a public plan. First aired on Thursday, August, 20, 2009National Health Care Forum with President Obama
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A debate: single-payer vs public competitor
Posted on March 12th, 2009 No commentsChange.org
Health Care
March 12, 2009
Blog Debate: “An Obsolete Model”
By Tim Foley
www.pnhp.org/news/2009/march/blog_debate_pnhp_v.phpThis is the second day of a blog debate about what approach we should take on health care reform in 2009. Debaters are Dr. Don McCanne, a retired family physician now serving as Senior Health Policy Fellow for Physicians for a National Health Program, and Jason Rosenbaum, a writer and activist, and the Deputy Director of Online Campaigns for Health Care for America Now! Dr. McCanne will be presenting the “single-payer” point of view, and Mr. Rosenbaum will be presenting the “public competitor” point of view.
Snippets from Dr. McCanne’s answer to the question: “Is there anything valuable that private insurance brings to the table which, with far more muscular federal regulation, would enhance an American universal health care system?”Dr. McCanne: “Our private plans are based on a business model designed to ensure success in the health care marketplace. Success is defined by the medical loss ratio, spending the least they can on health care. Much of their profound administrative waste is due to their elaborate efforts to avoid paying for care.
“The plethora of private plans merely demonstrates the insurers’ innovations in restricting benefits – preventing payment for non-covered services; increasing deductibles and other forms of cost sharing – erecting financial barriers to care; contracting with limited lists of providers – penalizing patients who need care outside of the restricted lists; selective marketing to healthy populations – especially the healthy workforce and their young, healthy families; using underwriting and rescissions to avoid paying for essential care; and on and on. These are great business tools, ensuring success of the insurers, but they are anathema to the more egalitarian goals of social insurance systems. They defeat the insurance function of pooling risk by segregating out the low-cost healthy into their own market, and dumping the high-cost sick onto taxpayer funded programs.”
“Suppose we heavily regulate our private insurers and require guaranteed issue of plans that actually include all necessary services, and remove barriers to care such as restrictive lists of providers and unaffordable deductibles. This would require a massive, revolutionary transformation of the missions, goals, and administrative functions of our business-model private plans designed to prevent paying for care, into social insurance private plans designed to remove the financial system as a barrier to care.
“Anyone who believes that this would be a simple transformation needs to have a conversation with insurance executives with their nine-figure compensation packages or with the large institutional investors who have fared extremely well under our market-based health care financing system.”
“As if that weren’t enough, there is one more unique problem in the United States. Our health care costs are much higher than in any other nation. If we were effective in covering everyone with a choice of private plans, whether with or without a public option, and if those plans covered the necessary care that people actually need, imagine the premium that would have to be charged.”
There is massive, intense opposition to the public option by the same elements that have been successful in defeating reform in the past. AHIP, PhRMA, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Republican members of Congress, and many others are all opposed to the Medicare-like option.
You are encouraged to follow the debate this week (only four questions) and provide your comments (http://healthcare.change.org/). Tim, Jason and I are very interested in your thoughts, and hopefully the policymakers will be as well.
Read the entire piece on PNHP.org: www.pnhp.org/news/2009/march/blog_debate_pnhp_v.php
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Posted on March 11th, 2009 No comments
Put Single-Payer on the Table
By Amy Goodman
TruthDig
Posted on Mar 10, 2009President Barack Obama promises health-care reform, but he has taken single-payer health care off the table. Single-payer is the system that removes private insurance companies from the picture; the government pays all the bills, but health-care delivery remains private. People still get their choice of what doctor to go to and what hospital to use. Single-payer reduces the administrative costs and removes the profit that insurance companies add to health-care delivery. Single-payer solutions, however, get almost no space in the debate.
A study just released by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, a media watchdog group, found that in the week before Obama’s health-care summit, of the hundreds of stories that appeared in major newspapers and on the networks, “only five included the views of advocates of single-payer—none of which appeared on television.” Most opinion columns that mentioned single-payer were written by opponents.
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United States National Health Care Act (H.R. 676)
Posted on March 11th, 2009 No commentsFrom liberal benefits to conservative spending, H.R. 676 is the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act
Those who demonize single payer national health insurance are either brainwashed and ill-informed about “socialized medicine” or they directly profit from keeping the status quo.
Those who argue that national health insurance would lead to “rationing” have (obviously) never been turned down for coverage or denied a medical procedure by their insurance company. I’m here to tell you there are tens of millions of Americans who experience health care rationing every day because of insurance companies. Nearly 70 million in fact (45 million uninsured; 25 million underinsured).
It’s time for equality and fairness in our health care system. Everybody in, nobody out.
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Co-author of iMoney (Bloomberg) says Single Payer is Okay
Posted on March 11th, 2009 No commentsIn his commentary “No Reason to Demonize U.S. Single-Payer Health”, John F. Wasik wrote:
It’s time to stop kicking sand in the face of single-payer health care. It may be the strongest solution around to insure every American at a lower cost.
After decades of industry campaigns against this model — dubbed by its critics as “socialized” medicine — it’s important to stop whining and evaluate the many economic benefits. Health care is a fundamental human right.
If President Barack Obama wants real change in American health care, he will have to get over the fear of even mentioning single-payer concepts. At his health-care summit last week, only the threat of a demonstration garnered late invitations for Oliver Fein and Congressman John Conyers, two leading proponents of the single-payer plan.
Health-care costs have become a crippling personal-finance burden for 45 million uninsured and 25 million underinsured Americans. Those outside of the fractured employer-based system are only one illness away from financial ruin.
Lose your job and most likely your health coverage will disappear unless you want to pay exorbitant rates. And it’s getting worse. Because of the growing jobless rate, some 14,000 Americans are losing their coverage daily, according to the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
A single-payer plan would cover everybody regardless of employment situation and save money by cutting out middlemen.
Single Payer would SAVE $400 billion – Read the whole article here.
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A health insurance broker speaks out!
Posted on March 10th, 2009 No commentsFinally! A health insurance broker tells it like it is, and speaks out on behalf of individuals and small businesses who are struggling to get or keep health insurance.
=================================================================The Health Care Blog
March 7, 2009
A Broker’s Lament: We Brought This On Ourselves
By John SinibaldiA huge segment of the American population is simply far too strapped to ever afford the premiums and costs associated with health insurance/health care as it is structured today.
It isn’t the employees of government (local, county, state or federal) who will demand immediate change. It isn’t the employees of institutional companies (the Motorolas, GEs, Microsofts of the country) who will demand change. It isn’t those on Medicare or Medicaid or the VA who will demand change. It isn’t the wealthy. It isn’t the poor. And, it isn’t the vast majority of health insurance agents who work with large group clients (because, while that market is becoming ever more difficult and the work more taxing, they’re still selling SOMETHING to these bigger businesses and government entities).
Why don’t these people see what I’m seeing? Simply because, while they are feeling the effects of the rise in health care/health insurance costs and the downturn in the economy, most of these businesses and their employees and dependents (and the affluent) have yet to have a clue about how expensive things really are (or in the case of the rich, they can still afford their out-of-pocket expenses). The agents who market to large employers are still making lots of money (I know, I rub elbows with them at my local Health Underwriters meetings once a month).
That leaves individuals and small businesses and the agents who work primarily in those markets – the very folks most beleaguered by the current situation. While the employee of a regional electric utility is complaining about monthly payroll deductions for his family that now exceed $500 or more on a $60,000 annual salary, the longtime employee of a local small electrician is looking at monthly payroll deductions for his family of $1,500 on a $35,000 annual salary. His apprentice is younger, and so is “fortunate” to have monthly deductions for his family of only $900 on a $20,000 annual salary. The electrician’s helper making $9/hr can’t afford even his half of the premium for just himself.
Individuals on personal health insurance policies are also feeling the “pinch.” Most of my individual clients see increases of 18-25% a year.
It is all of these folks (and there are tens of millions of them), coupled with those who have already been priced out of the market altogether, who will fuel the fire for radical reform. It is these folks who complain – long, loud and bitterly – that the American dream is leaving them behind. It is these folks to whom the politicians will ultimately listen, because they’re the ones making all the noise. It is these folks who will ultimately define what the next set of reforms looks like – and those reforms will NOT be confined only to the small group and individual markets – nor do these folks give a rat’s rear end if the insurance industry is involved. (After all, we’re doing such a wonderful job for them now.)
And, in my opinion, rightfully so. The health insurance industry (with lots of complicity from legislators, lobbyists and industry groups like ours) has let them down. Period. We have chased profits, chased commissions, swallowed every piece of spin the insurance industry has fed us, and generally ignored the growing number of folks who are beyond dissatisfied with the status quo. They’re mad, and they’re not going to take it any more.
We’re not talking about 5 million, or 15 million people. No, when you add together all small group employees and their dependents, with those who have individual coverage, and the 50 million or so who have no coverage, you’re talking about 100 million people or more.
We have brought this upon ourselves, because we (the industry, maybe not each of us individually) have ignored what folks want in favor of what WE want. The industry has ignored calls for more efficient claims and billing, lower bloat, curtailing outrageous CEO and executive salaries, and a more reasonable approach to return on investment. Our industry has ignored any attempt at out-of-the-box thinking to get reasonably priced health insurance to most low-wage Americans, instead focusing on mis-communications to get Americans to buy into what the industry wants (”High Deductible Health Plans are good for you. We don’t care if you can’t afford the deductible. Now accept that fact and shut up.”) Most of all, our industry has simply ignored an ever-louder clamor for us to get our act together. Instead of focusing on a long-term vision for the future of the industry (one that actually includes the very consumers to whom we sell products), the health insurance carriers have instead bellied up to the short-term trough of immediate reward (executive compensation, shareholder value, golden parachutes).
I’m normally not negative, either. I’ve always considered myself a realist. Yet here I am, watching every prediction I’ve made over the past 15 years on forums like this come true.
The saddest part is listening to all of the gnashing of teeth and screeching and wailing, mostly from the very folks who have repeatedly turned a deaf ear to the situation year after year because they were making gobs of money. (Yes, I’m talking about a lot of you on this very forum). In fact, some of you are still wearing your rose-colored glasses, and acting like if you just click your red-sequined shoes together, you’ll be able to get back home.
Well, you ain’t Dorothy, and this ain’t Oz.
Let’s see what the President and Congress come up with, and try to work with it – because it is inevitable that the reforms will be major, because we’ve waited too long to save our current system as we know it.
I will not apologize for the above, and I will probably not respond to the rants, flames and cacophony that are sure to ensue. We brought this upon ourselves, so now we’ll have to deal with it.
Note by Brian Klepper: John Sinibaldi is a St. Petersburg, FL-based health insurance agent – or as his industry association prefers to be called, “Health Underwriters” – catering primarily to small employer groups. He’s posted reality-based columns here in the past, including a particularly pithy one recently on small group coverage in Florida. The fiery comment above was written to colleagues on a national health care brokers’ forum.
Also, be sure to scroll down later to read his “comment” which he posted on March 9th.
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OUR COMMENTS to Mr. Sinibaldi,
Your post brought tears to my eyes! Not having health insurance is one of the scariest situations a person could face. You’re afraid if you get sick that you’ll die – - and if you live, you’re afraid you’ll lose everything you own and be homeless.
Our health care system is like the Titanic. The rich are still partying on the top deck while the rest of us are already in the cold, dark water trying to avoid the sharks.
God bless you, Mr. Sinibaldi – for speaking out on behalf of the individuals and small businesses who have been pushed overboard by a broken and perverse health care system.
I hope you will join us in the fight for single payer national health insurance. It’s my understanding that “gobs of money” will be made in the renewable energy sector. With your brains and honesty, you should have no trouble switching to a wonderful new career. Thank you again.
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Our contentious health care system
Posted on March 8th, 2009 No commentsNothing gets two friends to quarrel more than to bring up health insurance and reform.
It starts when one friend has enjoyed employer-sponsored (group) health insurance; and the other is self-employed left to purchase individual (non group) insurance.Friend #1 has a PPO/preferred provider policy.
Friend #2 has fluctuating income each month and cannot afford health insurance. It’s always a choice of whether to pay their mortgage or for health insurance. The roof over head always wins out.
Friend #1 has never been denied coverage due to a preexisting condition; and has no idea of the high costs of individual policies.
Friend #2 knows that group insurance has to cover everyone regardless of preexisting conditions and employees don’t cover the bulk of the premiums.
Friend #1 argues they don’t want to lose what they have, and fears ’socialized medicine’. . . which, to them, means poor quality and service the same way they equate poor quality and service from some low-level state agency (think: CA Dept. of Motor Vehicles).
Friend #2 points out to friend they selectively choose what they consider to be the worst agency, and they never consider those government agencies that excel at what they do such as the FAA or the Military, or even their local fire and police departments.
Friend #2 gets weary trying to educate the benefits of a single payer national health system…they are beginning to understand that some people don’t want to be confused with facts, some people will believe all kinds of nonsense because it fits with the scenario they want to believe, which is to leave things as they are because they currently aren’t having problems with getting to the doctor of their choice or getting their medical bills paid.
It’s just a matter of time Friend #1 will see the light. With our system – even if you have insurance, no one is safe.
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Why insurance companies are “partners” in wolves’ clothing
Posted on March 7th, 2009 No commentsRead this important article on Consumer Watchdog by Judy Dugan to understand why Insurance companies are “partners” in wolves’ clothing
I love her summary:
“Make insurance companies reform or die.”
“It’s not like insurance companies show any mercy to their custormers, like Pat. Without competition from a public plan, they’ll keep creating new loopholes that deny care, foster inefficiency and keep shareholders happy at any cost to national health.”