Health Insurers Offer Lollipops and Unicorns with New Reform Concessions
By Susie Madrak Wednesday Mar 25, 2009 2:00pm
Here's the question: Do we ignore the fact that because other countries don't have for-profit systems, they enjoy what is to Americans an almost unimaginable degree of medical security?
Or should we welcome this apparent change of heart and look at it in a vacuum, pretending the insurance industry doesn't have a long and ugly track record of egregious abuses and immoral behavior? Should we just call a mulligan and pretend they're now negotiating in good faith?
Because really, I'm not feeling it. I'm just not that trusting. I believe Howard Dean when he says, "If there's no public plan, it's not real reform":
WASHINGTON —The health insurance industry said Tuesday that it was willing to end the practice of charging higher premiums to sick people if Congress adopted a comprehensive plan that provided coverage to all Americans.
The industry’s flexible position on the issue came as a surprise to lawmakers, and could make it easier to reach an agreement in Congress because it narrows the issues on which insurers are ready to fight the Democrats who control Congress and the White House.
Insurers said they were still staunchly opposed to creation of a new government-run health insurance plan, which, under many Democratic proposals, would compete directly with private insurers.
In effect, insurers said they were willing to discard an element of their longstanding business model, under which insurance policies are priced, in part, on the basis of a person’s medical condition or history.
In the past, insurers have warned that if they could not consider a person’s health in setting premiums, the rates charged to young, healthy people would soar, making coverage unaffordable.
But Karen M. Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, a major trade group, told lawmakers on Tuesday that insurers were exploring ideas to prevent such increases by spreading the risks and costs across a larger population of both healthy and unhealthy people.
Insurers said that they could accept more aggressive regulation of not just their premiums but also their benefits, underwriting practices and other activities. Such strict regulation, they said, would make a new public program unnecessary.
The insurers set forth their position at a Senate hearing on Tuesday and in letters to the Democratic chairmen and senior Republican members of the two Senate committees primarily responsible for health care legislation.
The letters were signed by Ms. Ignagni and Scott P. Serota, president of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association.
Senator Jeff Bingaman, Democrat of New Mexico, who presided over the hearing, welcomed the insurers’ position.
“It was a significant step for them to take,” Mr. Bingaman said in an interview. “That’s certainly not been their position in previous years. I hope it moves us closer to something that we could label a consensus.”
In other words, they'll accept just about anything that won't put these devoted lovers of the free market in competition with a government-run program like Medicare. And after all, we don't want to hurt their feelings!
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love this guy. Mikey!
Kucinich! Cheer leading, sux.
...you MUST take the profit out of the medical coverage system.
If not, we are always in an adversarial relationship with the system!!!!!!!
Own the politicians. Period.
Ordinary Joe and Jane America did NOT finance their re-elections (almost ALL are incumbents), the major medical insurance corporations, big corporate banks etc. financed their campaigns.
Those who get elected are therefore indebted to do the bidding of the man who paid for the piper to play. The average American, whether those with no insurance, or the many millions who are one day away from losing their coverage or who have substandard coverage or who CAN afford it but have pre-existing conditions can just go pound salt where the sun don't shine. Nobody in Congress cares. (Except Conyers and Kucinich and a hand full of others).
Until we figure out a way to break the stranglehold the major "for-profit" insurance companies have on Congress and the President, by publicly financed elections, we can just forget ever having the kind of medical insurance nearly every other industrialized (and civilized!!) society enjoys.
I personally believe that every single medical insurance corporation in this country should be eliminated from the healthcare equation. Our tax dollars, coupled with a drastic cut in military spending, should be used to finance the system. To stop the for-profit insurance companies from whining too loudly, their employees could all be given first dibs on jobs within the system.
The U.S. government is getting away with murder right now at our expense. Whether it's a war on the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Gaza or a war against the American people by the for-profit medical insurance companies and their Congressional lackeys. Either way, it's murder. Either blatantly or by neglect.
Your tax dollars at work.
But let me phrase it more colloquially,... fuck these scum bag companies, & fuck anyone like Senator Jeff Bingaman too!
No amount of regulation will keep the insurance industry honest. Screw them and put real health care reform in place.
Howard Dean mentioned a few weeks ago, that if everybody can and would just move to the Medicare system, this would destroy for profit health insurance.
..and that's a good thing, huh?
Yes.
They've cheated us enough. And denied coverage enough.
Isn't it only for people over 65?
but it still isn't free.
here you go I'll give you guys a link to Conyers site maybe you could get behind that 1.
http://www.johnconyers.com/healthcare
hr 676
when will it be time for the people to realize that they, not a corporation, is the most important entity? A corporation serves hunamity (or at least I wish it did)... everyone needs to get the big worry of health and wellness where it belongs... in a not-for-profit government-run entity. It's not socialism... it's about frickin' time!
It's a racket and will continue to be a racket until we stop politicans from getting those "freedom of speech (what BS)" contributions. Oh, give me a President who announces MEDICARE FOR ALL effective October 1,
2009, funding to come from reprogrammed monies.
On the one hand, they sell "privatization" because it ostensibly allows competition that ensures more efficiency and lower costs than a government-run program.
But then when faced with competing (Oh Noes!) with a government-run plan they complain they can't face the competition.
BE DONE WITH THEM !!
spot on.
Let's say that you run a lemonade stand and you sell glasses of lemonade for $0.25 a glass.
Let's say that I also run a lemonade stand, but I give my lemonade away for free. I can afford to do this because I take lemons and sugar from the local grocery store for free. If they don't give them to me, my goons with black uniforms and automatic weapons will come and take ownership of the store and lock the owner away in a cage.
Everyone seems to want to get my lemonade for free and doesn't buy your lemonade.
I guess you just couldn't handle the competition.
from 1930 to 1940, one sixth of the American population died of starvation, exposure or lack of medical care.
to a future where getting sick, going hungry and dying are all optional, the ultimate prosperity.
bullshIt when my time comes.
about the 'future' they were ill-prepared to imagine, you mean?
but at least the insurance companies are realizing that the old way of doing business aint' gonna fly anymore. That's a good thing.
Insurance Industry: The Parasite That Feeds on US Public Health System
i remember moving to canada in 1971. at the time a doctor would make approximately 100K a year under that system.
The Germans have a for profit healthcare and health insurance systems that are completely privatized. The only state hospitals in Germany are medical universities.
The difference between us and them is this. The Germans actually regulate the industries. Private healthcare worked wonderfully in this country until the Government decided to deregulate it.
I live in a nice neighborhood. My wife has a masters degree and teaches, and I have a Ph.D. and teach. Combined, we don't make as much as the 5 insurance salesmen that live around us. I am not attacking them or their careers, but it seems absurd that one insurance salesman makes more that a 15 year veteran teacher with an advanced degree and a university professor combined.
http://www.fiercehealthcare.com/story/consult...
Is it just me or does this sound suspiciously like "We'll insure the people who don't need insurance and we'll let the government insure the sick people"?
Once again I think we're about to privatize the profits while socializing the losses. Sounds like a winner for the insurance parasites!
I am starting to see a recurring theme here.
like our banking meltdown...
We know the private insurance companies will be no where to find when the country is paralyzed (no pun intended) when the next POLIO, FLU, TB, MEASLES epidemic strikes the nation!
i know a little about that, cuz I had the shit.
it was a massive NATIONAL PUBLIC HEALTH program, conducted in all the schools, public and private, theough the course of a couple of years and a couple of vaccine versions...
have always been cherry picking, why would they stop? It's never been about keeping people healthy, or providing coverage when they are ill, it's always been about the bottom line, and that is the problem.
http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/wp-content/...
the people outside of the paying healthCare pool that can't pay their healthCare bills will have their
bills/cost shifted to the paying pool. essentially this is a "hidden tax". also ERISA is a subsidy for employers who provide healthCare insurance. this is a also a tax to many people who don't have
healthCare insurance.
to protect us from all the medical practice mistakes-errors that are made?
to that extent is the plan, whatever it is, a failure to the average citizen.
Nothing's gonna get fixed in health care until the whole system breaks. That will take eight or more years to happen.
good news!
and you might see the "breaking". The fix? I don't know.
Whenever I think about this I have visions of "Blade Runner" or "Johnny Mnemonic" where there is essentially a health care black market.
I'd also like to see the link between drug companies and physicians stopped in America. In most other countries of the world, prescription drugs are very few in number, and people can just buy many drugs over the counter in pharmacies. I'd say we're just as smart as people in Europe and Mexico. The pharmacists are the drug experts anyway, not physicians, who are too busy to familiarize themselves with thousands of available drugs, what they'll do, side-effects, etc.
My beef is that in order to get prescription drugs in the US, you have to see a doctor, paying the doctor and then paying for the drug, too. Many times people just tell the doctor what drug they want, and s/he writes out the order for it. May as well buy it direct after checking with the pharmacist about its safety and efficacy.
45 million NOT covered
TB, Whooping cough, Etc.Etc. ALL on the rise
the sick are dropped (now with 'a pre-existing condition) when it gets too expensive for the ins. co's
coverage has been drastically reduced from a few years ago (read your policy)
our longevity and our birth survival rates are dismal for such a wealthy nation
(anyone against you receiving the best free/cheap care available, is NOT on your side)
Whooping cough and other vaccine-preventable diseases are on the rise because of the fraudulent claim that vaccines cause autism.
won't happen. Here in Canada it is getting chipped away slowly. Eventually we will have similar to your system. It isn't the "for profit" insurance that is killing ours though. It is the political layers of overpaid, underworked, nonresponsible cashsuckers that run the system. Doctors are rewarded, nurses treated like crap. And the CEO's that run the hospitals and system? Make huge dollars, increasing yearly to the point of ridiculous. Top that off with an aging population that pays little in, but takes lots out, and you have a formula for failure. It's inevitable unfortunately.
everything.
no matter where it is.
i was listening to an interview on fresh air( NPR) a few weeks ago. the interview was with the ceo of aetna
who said if something is NOT done soon the cost of healthCare insurance will double by 2017.
They deserve whatever "trust" they've earned by being so damned in-your-face greedy and "concerned" about those they insure.
I am of the opinion that nothing in health care, banking, maybe even education, utilities, or infrastructures should be allowed to be run by for-profit corporations. Reasonable salaries, actual living wages, for everyone serving in those organizations taken out of fees and charges, yes. Ten percent above costs for R&D of new products or technologies. But no corporate profiteering just because they can. Profiteering on luxuries, yes.
America is waking up to the reality of what corporations are doing to us with their greed, particularly those services and benefits we MUST use to conduct our daily business, and I don't think many are happy about it.
Why not treat health care insurance companies like public utilities? Too simple? Too logical?
If there's enough will to make a serious change (big IF there), we should just go straight to universal health care.
That'll happen when people in the U.S. slough off their Stockholm syndrome, and stop sympathizing with their captors. In other words, no more of this "But the FREE MARKET! But the FREE MARKET!" bullshit, which makes sense coming out of the mouths of corporate shitballs, not those making poverty wages.
If you want it badly enough, you'll get it.
The rest can pretty well take care of themselves...
Don't forget about farms! Gotta have nationalized farms! And transportation! Gotta have nationalized airlines and trucking companies! Oh, and news! We need a nationalized media industry!
energy, healthcare and banks will do it.
You're right, we'll get to the rest later....
Corporatism is taking care of it...
You extremists! Always Getting Excited...
Although I don't see any practical difference between "nationalized" farms and 'corporate farms. The same can be said, really, about the media too. As I am rpt to muse upon the slightest provocation: In the Corporate State, corporate media are the State Media.
Ah, so you do realize the similarity of our current situation and the one you dream of?
but public ownership of the energy sector, health, and banks would functionally place other sectors under a kind of de facto regulation, would in effect impose 'altruism'--call it community regard, call it public morality, i don't care--on the bidness models...
there's no reason NOT to have a mixed economy, that I can think of...no practical one...
involves letting the government run things. Think about anything the government runs, and see where I'm going with this woody.
That isn't the way the credit unions are run. They are owned and run by the depositors. The government doesn't need to be involved at the working level, though reasonable government regulations and oversight are always a good idea.
is that credit unions are the next in line to get a piece of the "bailout" pie. Obviously, their soundness is questionable as well.
They already got it and aren't likely to get any more. The "corporate credit unions" (not part of the local credit unions but rather private "investment agencies" used by local credit unions) handled some of the depositors' money, and the CCUs did the same thing that the big corporate banks did -- they gambled with that money.
But the credit unions were far less damaged by the gambling than the for-profit banks. Not all of their money was handed over to the CCUs.
You can bet they won't use them again!
Here's more information.
earlier this afternoon I watched last week's episode of PBS' show NOW. It focused on the situation with Medi-cal in Nevada (for those who are wondering, Medicare is for senior citizens, Medi-cal is for the really poor and disabled).
It was heartbreaking to hear all these awful stories of people who are left behind by Medicare/Medi-cal and private insurance companies... There was a woman who can't recieve the chemo she needs for breast cancer b/c her hubby was laid off the exact same day she was diagnosed (and her husband was actively suicidal over his feelings of misplaced guilt over his wife's predicament), there was a little baby who is on a respirator at home 24 hours a day, and his parents can't have a nurse relieve them of keeping an eye on him during the night (the parents are really sleep deprived now).
And they had the goddamn idiot that Bush II put in charge of the federal Medi-cal program, who now works for the Heritage Foundation... He prattled on about how currently healthy families and children who can't afford private insurance shouldn't have Medi-cal because he's worried about the private insurance companies, and the "indivdual choice" of Americans.
Then he made me nauseous when he said he "loved" the people on Medi-cal. As a Medi-cal recipient who was up at 4 or 5 am this morning tending to her working but uninsured mother because she took ill during the night, he can spare me the condesending bullshit!
We shouldn't wait to people become severely ill before we do right by them. The sad thing that is very telling about me is that I probably wouldn't have Medi-cal right now if I hadn't had a bad disabiling emotional breakdown 10 years ago, right around the time that my Medi-cal I was recieving as the underage child of a deceased veteran was due to run out. Now that I am getting closer and closer to making a decent recovery, I may find myself without insurance at all once I am able to work full time...
you succinctly explained everything that is wrong with a for-profit health insurance system and everything that is wrong with how we treat people who need help and can't afford it. I work as a nurse in Nevada and see this offensive crap first-hand. I have a daughter who was born with a congenital defect and we have had to keep her covered continously for fear of not being able to get necessary surgeries and care if the coverage lapsed. It's a ridiculous game that no one but the insurers wins.
and I'm really sorry you've had to witness Nevada's troubles first hand, and that your daughter is among those that the health care system fails!
Seems some years back the "big new idea" were the HMO's. How did that all turn out again?
Until some politicians in WashingtonDC--whether in the House or the Senate or the WH--get some courage and go after the profit component in American health care nothing will change.
This for profit precept based on current usage of plan cost shutouts,health condition shutouts,coverage disqualifications,treatment/surgery denials and eligibility time outs is a immoral precept.
Why is profit motive allowed to determine American health care outcomes?
The morality of making money off people being forced to pay extortion styled insurance premiums and out of pocket costs to stay healthy,get healthcare or avoid premature death outcomes must be exposed as monstrous and barbaric.
American healthcare is based on 19th century precepts of what is a luxury and personal wealth determining access and outcome.
Shaming health insurance charlatans without letup and shutting down the immoral for profit concept will need to happen otherwise nothing will change.
When I think of these guys, the first term that comes to my mind is "death penalty." I thought I was being facetious, but upon further thought, aren't they killing people every day?
If the insurance companies are so great, what do they have to fear? I say eliminate them now. The insurance companies place their fiducrary responsibilities for their beloved shareholders over the lives and welfare of the people whom they insure. How dare they try to barter with us over pre-existing condition so that they can swallow more prey. The insurance companies are good for absolutely nothing. Grow some testes, administration. Think and act big. Single Payer Now!
I just got off a conference call with Howard Dean
After his tenure as Chair of the DNC and two successful election cycles, he's back whipping his grass roots to move on congress for real health care reform.
He says: If what passes doesn't give us the option of buying into Medicare if we want to, it will not be real health care reform and we should vote against it.
I think he's absolutely right. As someone who last had insurance more than 10 years ago, and has tried to get private insurance, I believe Dean knows what he's talking about when he says that if you lose employer paid insurance after age 50, you'll have a very difficult time replacing it from the private insurance market. Unless private insurance is forced to compete with a public single payer system like Medicare, they will continue to make the system we have one that is solely profit driven, and thus encumbered with denials of participation and coverage, and the subsequent inflated costs.
So there's a new movement afoot to pressure President Obama and the Congress to put that option in any health care legislation, and to fight for it to their last breath. We have to make them do it, they must believe we will come for them with pitchforks if they fail us.
Anyone who likes their private insurance can keep it, they will not be forced to change, but those of us who are shut out of private insurance MUST MUST MUST have the Medicare buy in option.
There's a petition to sign, which leads to page for activity sign-up and contribution. I hope you will sign. Do more if you can, donate and forward this to everyone you know. Lobby your friends and family, call your rep and your senators, be as annoying as you have to be, talk to strangers in the check-out line. Organize. Watch Congress like your life depends on it; mine does.
The insurance companies will never ever do right unless they're overwhelmed.
Spot fu
cking on. Like I said above, you won't get it until you want it badly enough.I signed the petition, and signed up to write letters! :)
As promised, here's the link to PBS NOW's show on Nevada's Medicaid problem.
(Try not to weep when you see the poor little baby whose parents can't afford to get him a nurse to visit the house)
They left dozens of loopholes and Outs for when the danger of a government run system passes. In other word all this will do is for a short time maybe 8 years or so they will hide there scams better and cut the rates of some of the people. Then when talk is gone of an expanded Government program they will Hike everything back up by using those outs and loopholes to keep it nice a legal.
And the cycle continues they push us to a near collapse of the medical system, leads to the government talking about taking over, which leads to them offering to cut the rates; and again and again and again till they push a little too much and the system fails.
It's murder when an insurer denies a claim to make a profit ... while someone dies as a result ... What I have never understood is why out of the many who have lost love ones ... why they have not tried to kill the CEO's of these criminal insurance companies. I don't think it would be the right thing to do but I could see someone doing it.
THAT past the moderators?
I'm on your team.
we disallow their claim. Upon checking our contract, that option is not covered.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3_S-YaRLa8
Leaches still being leaches, what a suprise.
Great scene!
But, you don’t have to cross an ocean to get an eye-opener on the benefits of universal health care. In fact, just consider Canada, your neighbour to the north. Sure, we are used to being ridiculed by US comedians, pundits and politicians (mainly from the GOP). And yes, our “ah-shucks” humility can be somewhat grating at times.
But when we brag (and we do brag), we like to do so with facts and data. So here are some apples-to-apples US-Canada healthcare facts and data from the World Health Organization (WHO) that your US readers might find useful. These figures are from 2006 and all comparisons can be verified on the WHO website at the following web addresses:
USA: http://www.who.int/countries/usa/en/
Canada: http://www.who.int/countries/can/en/
Population:
Canada: 32.5 million
USA: 302.8 million
Gross National Income Per Capita (Intl $, 2006):
Canada: $ 36,300
USA: $ 44,000
Healthy Life Expectancy at Birth:
Canada: Male – 70 / Female - 74
USA: Male – 67 / Female - 71
Probability of Dying under Five (per 1,000 live births)
Canada: 6
USA: 8
Probability of Dying Between 15 and 60 (per 1,000 populations)
Canada: Male - 89 / Female - 55
USA: Male - 137 / Female - 80
Total Expenditure on Health Per Capita (Intl $, 2006)
Canada: $ 3,672
USA: $ 6,714
Total Expenditure on Health as % of GDP
Canada: 10.0
USA: 15.3
I live in the province of Ontario. My Health Care premium last year was $600. For the entire year. When I go to my doctor I just pass them my health card and they scan and return it to me.
Thats it, eh!
But Karen M. Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, a major trade group, told lawmakers on Tuesday that insurers were exploring ideas to prevent such increases by spreading the risks and costs across a larger population of both healthy and unhealthy people.
Well, guess what system best spreads the risks and cost across a large population of both healthy and unhealthy people, a system by which that "large population" is the population of the U.S.? A SINGLE payer system. One single insurer that covers us all, sick and healthy, spreading the risk allowing for complete coverage at low and equitable cost.
Thanks, Ms. Ignagni, for arguing in favor of a single-insurer system.
In Canada we don't allow Private Insurance and Clinics because it MIGHT create a two tiered system, one for the rich and one for the poor. Causing neglect of the public one. So if you allow the corruption in, it will never go away until you literally remove it.
They will do whatever they can to ruin the public service. Like education, like prisons, like cops. They want more prisoners, more arrests and they teach only what they are told, not what is right to teach.
You sold off your country. I recommend getting it back.
to buy an individual policy and was turned down by Kaiser because I take aciphex for gastric reflux. Unfuckingbelievable. A friend suggested I try AARP (arrgghhh! I'm TOO YOUNG for AARP!) for insurance, that they have good rates. So I did. They refused to insure me because the permanent address on my credit card and debit card is in WIsconsin, and I am living and working in LA California for the next several months. They won't give me a policy that I can use right here. So I'm back at square one, which is continuing to pay out of pocket for my health care. When the fuck can we get a single payer program like European countries do, with the option of buying private insurance if one chooses to do so?
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