After another threat, it's time to stand up to the health-insurance industry
The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association has released their own version of the AHIP propaganda report.
By releasing a transparently hyperbolic and self-serving study on the effects of health reform, the insurance industry appears to have blundered in a big way. They discredited themselves in the eyes of the media elite, alienated potentially sympathetic members of Congress, and rallied Democrats around a common foe.
So what are they doing now? They seem to be trying the same stunt again, with a brand new study. It's not as deceptive as the last one. But it's not going to win any points for intellectual honesty, either.
This time the study's sponsor is the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (BCBSA), rather than America's Health Insurance Programs. The hired gun accounting firm is Oliver Wyman, instead of PriceWaterhouseCoopers. But the message is the same as before: Pass reform, as currently envisioned, and insurance premiums will go way up...read on
Cohn thinks this report is slightly better than the last one, but they both end the same. If we implement health care reform they promise to raise your rates. Why isn't the media reporting this? They are threatening American lives and families and this should not be tolerated.
Digby also catches this and is not a happy camper about it either.
Can someone please explain to me why this isn't a blatant threat? Nice little health care system you have here. Be a shame if anything happened to it.
In a normal country, this kind of corporate threat, in which they openly say that unless they get their way, they will raise premiums sky high and make everyone suffer, would be considered criminal. After all, premium pricing is entirely in their hands --- and that's why we are in the terrible situation we are in today.
This is f*&king criminal. I'm sitting here and having a nice dream. I see Harry Reid acting like a real majority leader telling Congress that this is unacceptable. And then he fades to black and I'm transported to the House of Representatives. They are spending the day rebuking these reports for the phonies that they are and they pass legislation that makes it a criminal offense with a maximum of up to three years in jail for any lobby-bastards who put out bogus reports that are circulated to intimidate Americans. Now this is a fantasy I know, but they do spend hours of time making dedications of parks to the rich and famous people and in my fantasy they spend a couple of hours and threaten all groups that actively work to undermine legislation with lies.
And Alan Grayson leads the charge.
By the way, PricewaterhouseCoopers took so much heat for their frakked up AHIP report that they issued this statement.
PricewaterhouseCoopers, the authors of AHIP's report, put out a statement last night that basically said, "Hey, we weren't paid to evaluate the effects of the entire bill, but rather a small slice of it." The statement only seems to reinforce critics' view that the report is skewed precisely because it doesn't take into account the totality of reform. PwC's report estimates that insurance premiums will rise faster under the proposed reforms than under the current system.
The last, and key, line from the statement: "If other provisions in health care reform are successful in lowering costs over the long term, those improvements would offset some of the impacts we have estimated.”
In other words, PwC is saying if reform's cost containment measures work, their estimate could be wrong.
So they are admitting that AHIP were liars. Nice.
What do you want it to be?
PWC is like the accountant in that old joke. They were hired because they would give the insurances companies the results they wanted.
pre-existing condition at 8 months.
they won't tell you it's pre-existing till you try to claim. if you know it's pre-existing, they can't bleed you, so you pay for 40 years then try to claim, and then they clue you in, pre-existing, sorry pal.
I'd love to see Alan Grayson mop the floor with them and throw them out with their filthy water.
Paging Alan Grayson .... Emergency ....
are holding their feet to the fire... Most of the proposals give the insurance companies at least till 2013 to get in line!
.But we need to help...keep the pressure on Congress 1.800.828.0498 or 1.877.264.4226!
Are they saying they're not going to raise their rates anyway, reform or no reform? I find that hard to believe since their the swine who raised my COBRA 30% in less than a year, with no claims made against it.
Is one of the worst at denying claims. My wife works in medical billing and sees it every day. They are all scum.
they'd call the bluff of the insurance companies and do single payer. It's time to put the greedy bastards out of business.
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortun... Real greedy.Facts just get in the way.
"The last, and key, line from the statement: "If other provisions in health care reform are successful in lowering costs over the long term, those improvements would offset some of the impacts we have estimated.”
In other words, PwC is saying if reform's cost containment measures work, their estimate could be wrong."
No, they aren't saying it *could* be wrong they are saying it *would* be wrong.
http://covertheuninsured.org/legislative_bill... .
From AssociatedPress Channel at YouTube:
Raw Video: Arrests Made at NYC Insurance Protest
Democracy is too important to be entrusted to politicians.
Rise Up!
Protest!
I'm curious, why were they arrested? Just for being there? Jeebus.
In this article UPDATE 1-Pelosi condemns U.S. health insurance industry there is an amazing typo:
Democracy is too important to be entrusted to politicians.
Rise Up!
Protest!
Now there's a Freudian slip!
After all, to me ALL these for-profit "health" insurance corporations are no better than the mafia...
Just another branch of organized crime...
Oops. I forgot! Congress is in cohoots with them!:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racketeer_Influe...
"The US has an army of 90,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and is spending $100bn a year, but has still been unable to defeat 20,000-25,000 Taliban who receive no pay at all." - Patrick Cockburn
Yep, mafia.
1) Every single American should drop their insurance NOW. They can't function without money, while most of us can function, in the short term, without insurance.
2) Start up a community insurance program. Imagine if we all put HALF the money into a pool that we put into big insurance companies. We'd all get our healthcare paid for, no matter what procedures we needed.
I want nothing less than to see these greedy c***s**kers go belly up, lose their gated mansions and be living on the street with some of the people whose lives they've f***ed.
H.R.3400 try reading it.
Granted, it would be a roll of the dice cancelling one's insurance for a boycott.
But it's a toss-up whether your insurance would cover you anyway.
Get the unions in on a nationwide boycott.
What the hell, I'm self-rationing for fear of losing my insurance anyway. I don't see doctors anymore.
Hey, John!
Wanna scare the shit outta the insurance corporations?
This Thanksgiving, if the Democratic Party and Obama and Rahm get their way, Obama will be giving the turkey a reprieve and signing this despotic "health reform" into LAW.
Then if you and everybody else decide to go with your plan we will all be FINED for being in NON-COMPLIANCE WITH ZE MANDATE!!!!
You vill pay ze health insurance corporations ze money or you vill be FINED!!!!!!
"The US has an army of 90,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and is spending $100bn a year, but has still been unable to defeat 20,000-25,000 Taliban who receive no pay at all." - Patrick Cockburn
"Every single American should drop their insurance NOW".Then why all the Health insurance advertising on this web site then.Don't want bit off your nose dissipate your face now do you.
I haven't paid one red cent to any health insurance corporations since 1985....and back then it was a tiny co-pay for me and my kids as part of my benefits package during a nursing job I did for an HMO.
All the jobs I had after that did not offer benefits, so pffffttt!!!
I'm already anted in!!!
I've already decided that if they pass this despotic legislation I will pay the penalty until Medicare kicks in for me.
God knows I have been fighting the good fight for Single Payer, H.R. 676....which is what the American People deserve...at a MINIMUM.
"The US has an army of 90,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and is spending $100bn a year, but has still been unable to defeat 20,000-25,000 Taliban who receive no pay at all." - Patrick Cockburn
I think the purpose of these reports is to give insurers cover for raising rates after reform by even higher percentages than currently. They'll point to their reports and say "Hey, it isn't our fault. We told you so."
... "trigger" for a public option? The insurance companies are admitting now there will be no cost reductions, only more increases.
These last two threats by them tell me that only single-payer can reduce over-all health care costs.
that might not be considered, by itself, as a monopoly, but taken together (operating in collusion) with other mini-monopolies can be considered as anti-competitive monopolistic enterprises. This new RethugliKKKlan plan for HC insurance competition across state lines is pure Corporatist BS. The Feds pretty much gave up on HC insurance regulation, leaving it to the States, and now the NeoCons want to "end-run" around States' regulations in order to poach customers (patients) from other States based upon their home-state regulations. I guess the often meager States' regulation of HC insurance is still just way too onerous, to their already hefty bottom-lines.
And speaking of bottom-lines, I swear I heard some ass-hat commentator (nether guest nor reporter) on CNN two days ago quote a HC insurance "profit" of only 2% -- WTF is that about? Okay, maybe they are only reporting a 2% profit to their share-holders, AFTER they kick in hundreds of Millions USD into (false) Advertising, many tens of Millions USD into "lobbying" Congress, and many tens of Millions USD into Executive Board salaries and annual bonuses. By any rational method of accounting (excepting the "Enron Special" version), this would be felony fraud. Where are the aggregated shareholder lawsuits against their Executive Boards' "creative book-keeping"? 2%, AS IF! 30%, MORE LIKE!
I personally experienced the avarice and greed of BCBS in VA fully 30 years ago. While out of work on workman's compensation, I had an individual BCBS HC insurance account, while I retrained for work in a different industry. Over the course of 18 months, BCBS either changed (lowered) coverage or changed (raised) premiums 6 times, about every 3 months. They effectively lowered my coverage by 1/2 while raising premiums by 300 percent over those 18 months, to the point that I was forced to drop them.
IMHO, HC insurance in the USA is little more than an organized crime racketeering enterprise that is begging to be prosecuted under State-enforced RICO statutes. I wouldn't be particularly disappointed to see every member of every Executive Board of the HC insurance "mob" disappear like Jimmy Hoffa -- excepting that they would have escaped public prosecution and exploring their feminine sides while sharing a prison cell with "Bubba".
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
-- John F. Kennedy
Ok, I have been reading this blog and reading the comments. I also took the time to read the reports everyone is screaming about.
I am not going to pretend to be a Federal Level Attorney or schooled enough in Corporate and Constitutional Law to validate the opinions I am reading. However, do you think there is even the slightest possibility the information contained therein is being taken out of context?
So, I will ask a couple simple questions. 1) How many people live in the USA? 2) How many are uninsured? 3) How much money is owed to the Medical industry by the Insurance Industry? 4) Does the Insurance industry control the costs or prices charged by Medical Providers? 5) How does a Medical Provider make up the difference between what an insurance company is willing to pay on a claim and the amount they decided to charge? 6) Is there a connection between the price of healthcare and the amount that is owed to medical providers by insurance companies? 7) How many individuals are currently using a policy they purchased and claiming benefits that far exceed anything they would have paid into it had they had 5 lifetimes worth of payments? 8) What is the average cost on a single catastrophic claim?
If you look closely at what it takes to conduct a single study into the issue of healthcare reform, you will find that it is a monolithic endeavor. The questions I have asked are simplistic yet the answers lead to 1000's of more questions that range up and down the food chain.
The issue of healthcare reform is the defining undertaking of this generation. What we do and how we decide to proceed will define our place in history.
How will we be seen by future generations? Will we be seen as finger pointing malcontents? Or will we decide to stop making wild accusations, outlandish inferences, and stand up to the challenge of our time?
It is true that mistakes are being made. It is true that greed plays a part in the decision making process. It is true that some will break the law and that they will not be punished for doing so.
On the other hand, it is also true that there are many good people that are looking out for the interests of the people. It is true that there are politicians on both sides of the isle that care and are putting up the good fight. It is in them that you must place your trust and it is for them that you should expend your energy. Look for the individuals and Companies that speak the right words and have a history of doing what is right regardless of the price they must pay for doing so. You may find that if you look for the good, the good will find you.
Now, if you must cry out against a perceived injustice, do it in the form of providing a solution. Express your opinion about what is wrong and then provide a way to correct it. I think at that point, when you must use your energy to not just point a finger and verbalize your understanding of the problem, you opinion of what it takes to come up with working solutions will change.
Comments are closed on this entry