Insurance Industry Wants Tougher Mandate to Buy Coverage
EmailABC News' Teddy Davis reports: Karen Ignagni, the chief lobbyist for the health insurance industry, convened a conference call with reporters on Monday to argue that the health-care bill poised for a Tuesday vote in the Senate Finance Committee would drive up health-care premiums rather than lowering them as Democrats maintain. She based her argument on a report that the insurance industry paid for which was prepared by PriceWaterhouseCoopers. The health insurance industry's report warns that the typical family premium in 2019 could cost $4,000 more under the Finance bill than it would under current law. Under the Finance bill, insurers would be required to sell insurance to all applicants regardless of pre-existing conditions. Insurers would also be prohibited from considering health status in setting rates. The insurance industry is worried, however, that the Finance bill will not be as successful as other Democratic health-care bills in forcing everyone into the system because the penalties for going without coverage have been weakened during the amendment process. As a result, the industry fears that the Finance bill will not have enough young and healthy people paying premiums. "We're committed to the goal of comprehensive reform that we have advanced," said Ignagni. "But we agree with most health policy experts that decoupling of market reforms and personal responsibility doesn't work." In addition to targeting what they perceive as a weak individual mandate, the insurance industry is warning that three other provisions in the Finance bill will also drive up health care-costs: –A new tax on high-cost health care plans (commonly known as the "Cadillac" tax); –Cost-shifting as a result of cuts to Medicare; and –New taxes on several health care sectors including health insurers, pharmaceutical manufacturers, and medical device companies. If the Finance bill is enacted, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the number of legal nonelderly residents with insurance coverage would rise from 83 percent now to 94 percent over the next decade. The insurance industry, however, is not satisfied. Insurers say that reform efforts at the state level have shown that there needs to be even greater risk sharing. Asked how high the coverage rate needs to be in order to give the insurance industry confidence that it can afford to stop discriminating on the basis of pre-existing conditions, Ignagni said it would have to reach "the high-90s." To drive its message home, the insurance industry is planning to air television ads, according to the Washington Post. Ignagni declined to discuss the industry's ad plans on Monday's call with reporters, saying she would only discuss what was in the report itself. In the 1990s, the insurance industry aired a series of "Harry and Louise" television ads which helped to sink the Clinton reform effort. The White House and Senate Finance Committee have slammed the report as "self-serving." "This report is untrue, disingenuous and bought and paid for by the same health insurance companies that have been gouging too many consumers for too long as they stabd in the way of reform yet again," said Scott Mulhauser, a spokesman for Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee. "This is a self-serving analysis from the insurance industry, one of the major opponents of health insurance reform," added White House spokesman Reid Cherlin. Liberal advocates of health-care reform have used the industry's report to renew their calls for a public health insurance option. There is no government insurance option in the Finance bill. "The solution isn't to do what the industry wants – force people to buy their coverage or pay a high fine," said Richard Kirsch, the head of the liberal Health Care for America Now. "The solution is to provide enough assistance to people to make health care affordable and force the industry to compete with a public health insurance option so that they have to face real competition and lower their premiums." ABC News' Brittany Crockett contributed to this report. UPDATE: PricewaterhouseCoopers Seems to Acknowledge Limits of Its Own Study In a statement released Tuesday, the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers seemed to acknowledge the deficiencies of its own study, prepared for the insurance industry, which suggestged average family health insurance premiums would increase if legislation being voted on in the Senate Finance Committee were to become law. ABC's Jake Tapper and Sunlen Miller have more on ABC's "Political Punch" blog. Read it HERE.
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Her comments only reiterate the fact that a public option is vital. Better yet, I say we go for a single payer option and forget the Insurance Co.s
Posted by: Garland | October 12, 2009, 4:47 pm 4:47 pm
“The solution is to provide enough assistance to people to make health care affordable and force the industry to compete with a public health insurance option so that they have to face real competition and lower their premiums.”
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So the solution isn’t to make people buy insurance for themselves. The solution is apparently to use other people’s money to buy health insurance for some people?
It sounds to me like the average person is facing the choice of higher premiums, higher taxes, or fees which will be passed on to us, resulting in higher prices.
Without actually focusing on what will make costs lower, all these groups are just haggling over who gets to decide who we’ll be forced to hand our money over to.
Some reform.
Posted by: MayBee | October 12, 2009, 4:52 pm 4:52 pm
The health insurance industry’s report warns that the typical family premium in 2019 could cost $4,000 more under the Finance bill than it would under current law.
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Yep, No PO, this is the biggest support I have seen for the PO yet.
Posted by: Thinking | October 12, 2009, 5:00 pm 5:00 pm
Funny that the same Republicans who are touting the AHIP’s complaints now were against any mandate as recently as last nigiht.
http://www.political-buzz.com
Posted by: Matt | October 12, 2009, 5:05 pm 5:05 pm
“If the Finance bill is enacted, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the number of legal nonelderly residents with insurance coverage would rise from 83 percent now to 94 percent over the next decade.
The insurance industry, however, is not satisfied. ”
Just to be clear, they are not satisfied with killing a public option competitor that would introduce real competition into the currently stagnant market, nor are they satisfied with the millions of new customers a paltry 94% coverage (excluding the Medicare population) would bring, they insist they need a mandate that achieves 100% coverage (sorry “high-90s”) to keep turning out their billion-dollar profit quarters.
They aren’t worried about a weak mandate at all. They are worried about ANY reform, and this is just the line their well-paid lobbyists suggest has the best chance of saving the status quo.
Posted by: jhw539 | October 12, 2009, 5:52 pm 5:52 pm
So the health insurance industry wants tougher punishments in order to force people to buy insurance. That’s understandable.
The health insurance industry needs money. They have spend 1.4 million a day trying to destroy Obama’s health care reform. All the CEO’s of health insurance companies will want a 10 or 20% raise to their multi-million dollar salaries. Health insurance stock is the new darling of Wall Street and all the new investors expect a 20 to 40% return on their investment. An army of lobbyists is assaulting DC. You also pay for campaign contributions because every major player in health care reform – Max Baucus, Mike Enzi, Chuck Grassley, Olympia Snowe, Mitch McConnel, Orrin Hatch, all receive generous bribes from the health insurance industry.(Don’t believe me, do the research yourself. Check out Center for Political Responsiveness.)
And of course, 2010 is an election year, so health insurance industries will be spending billions of dollars to elect Republicans who in turn will eliminate health care reform.
And you or your employer is footing the bill. Have any one in the health insurance industry told you this?
This is the reason you need a way out – like the right to buy your health insurance from Medicare (That’s a public option.) The key to health care reform should be choice. If you want to buy insurance from a non-profit cooperative, fine. If you want to keep on giving your money away to K Street, Wall Street, and Capitol Hill, fine.
But if you want to buy from a public option, like Medicare, that provides health care for you rather than bribery money for politicians, you should have that right too. That’s the purpose of a public option.
Neither Wall Street Brokers, insurance company death squads, nor politicians on Capitol Hill should stand in the way of you and your doctor.
Posted by: William Joseph Miller | October 12, 2009, 6:00 pm 6:00 pm
Let’s also check out the real reason the health insurance industry wants stricter punishments.
Here are the facts I got from Center for Responsive Politics, so if you want to check out my information – be my guest.
Senator Mitch McConnell gets $ 2 million in political campaign contributions from the health sector. He gets $ 1 million from lobbyists. His top political donor is Kindred Health Care. Among the other top 20 campaign donors are Humana Inc, Blue Cross, and GalaxoSmithKline. I might add that Humana practices something that Cheryl Tidwell, a Humana executive calls “controlling utilization.” (Source David Sirota, from an article on the Huffington Post, August 28.)
The top 6 contributors for Charles Grassley include Blue Cross, 2nd place: Select Medical Group, 3rd place; and Amgen. Throughout Grassley’s career he has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the industries health insurance industry, health products, and pharmaceuticals.
Mike Enzi’s top political contributor is Pharmaceutical industry. Health professionals get 2nd place, and lobbyists take 7th place. Some of his top individual contributors include Blue Cross, Amgen, Merck & Co, and Goldman Sachs.
Senator Olympia Snowe gets $ 360,000 from the health sector. Aetna Inc is her 2nd individual top donor. She also gets campaign contributions from Spectrum Medical, and Goldman Sachs.
Senator Richard Lugar’s top industrial backers are security and investment industries. Since health insurance industries are Wall Street’s latest darlings, Lugar has every reason for delaying. Lugar also gets $ 177,000 in political campaign contributions from the health sector. Eli Lilly Pharmaceuticals and Blue Cross/Blue Shield are among his top 20 political campaign contributors.
Orrin Hatch gets $ 977,000 from health care sector. His top industrial donor are pharmaceuticals and health products. Other top industrial donors include hospitals, nursing homes, and health insurance companies. Of top 20 individual political donors, Blue Cross takes 2nd place. Amgen, Eli Lilly Kindred Health Care are also among the top 20.
Jim DeMint gets contributions from the insurance industry, lobbyists, securities and investment, and pharmaceuticals. Individual campaign contributors include Blue Cross/Blue Sheild, Cancer centers for the Carolinas, and the United health Group.
That good old feisty maverick John McCain has received $ 7 million from the health sector, including health insurance companies and pharmaceuticals during his political career $ 1.2 million of McCain’s campaign money comes from lobbyists who are now descending upon Washington Dc like locusts from a Biblical Plague in an effort to defeat Obama’s health care reforms. From 2005 to present McCain’s top 5 political contributors include Merrill-Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs, all of which are reaping record profits from health insurance companies and pharmaceuticals.
Lest any one think I’m picking on the Senate, let’s look at the record of the House.
Remember the darling of the right wing, Joe Wilson?
Among Joe Wilson’s contributors, health professionals took 1st place. Joe Wilson also gets hefty campaign contributions from lobbyists, for-profit hospitals and nursing homes, pharmaceuticals/health products, insurance companies, and securities and investments. If I conduct a sector analysis, the for-profit health sector is Wilson’s biggest contributor. Individual corporations which contribute heavily to Wilson’s political campaigns include American Hospital Association and Blue Cross/Blue Shield.
Furthermore, if you read an article by Holly Bailey on Newsweek.com, you’ll discover Joe Wilson voted 11 times against health care for Veterans, even though Wilson himself receives TRICARE, a government-run health care program for Veterans. So perhaps Joe Wilson needs to apologize to our veterans.
The GOP rebuttal to Obama’s health care speech is a panoply of the same special interests that Obama described. Louisiana Congressman Charles Boustany gave the rebuttal, an ironic choice if you consider that Louisiana has the second highest infant mortality rates in the country. (The first is Washington DC. Source: Statesmaster.com.)
Of the 20 top industries that give Charles Boustany campaign contributions, health professionals take 1st place. The other industries represented are lobbyists, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and HMOs. Ironically for a doctor, a person who is supposed to care about the health of his patients, Boustany finds nothing wrong with campaign contributions from the tobacco and liquor industries. If we were to analyze Bosutany’s contributions by sectors, the health sector is Boustany’s top contributor.
Boustany also gets a campaign contributions from the following vested interests: the National Association of Health Underwriters, the American College of Radiology, the American Academy of Ophthamology the American Academy of Otolaryngology, American Association of Clinical Urologists, American College of Cardiology, and American Society of Anesthesiologists.
Although junk food containing sugar is a major reason for our soaring health costs, and although Boustany as a doctor is supposed to care about his patients’ health, Boustany gladly welcomes campaign contributions American Sugar Cane League and American Crystal Sugar.
The tea bag march in Washington attracted a lot of GOP celebrities who spent their time bashing Obama. However, here are the facts these famous, or rather “infamous” politicians did not tell us.
For example, Mike Pense gets a lot of campaign contributions from the securities and investments industry. They are in fact is 2nd major campaign contributor. He also gets campaign contributions from the insurance industry, health professionals, and tobacco companies, whose products bring death and disease to millions of Americans. Reynolds American is actually one of the top 5 campaign contributors. The Investment Institute, which gets revenue from insurance companies occupies first place.
John Boehner gets generous campaign contributions from the insurance industry, which occupies 2nd place among Boehner’s top 5 campaign contributors. He gets additional contributions from pharmaceuticals, health professionals, and lobbyists. His top individual campaign contributors include Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Abbot Laboratories, Merck & Company, and, like Pense, Reynolds American, whose tobacco products are one of the reasons our health care is so high
One of Eric Cantor’s major campaign contributors is Securities and investment (2nd place). The insurance industry is 5th place. Other top contributors include health care professionals, lobbyists, and pharmaceutical companies. Although Cantor espouses traditional Christian values, he finds nothing wrong with accepting contributions from the liquor industry. Top individual campaign contributors include Eli Lilly & Co, and Altria, a tobacco company, which once again is part of our health care problem.
Bottom line – The health insurance needs money. Since 2010 is an election year, they need additional billions of dollars. This money is going to come out of your or your employer’s pockets through health insurance premiums. Have any of these politicians ever told you that you will be forced to make political campaign contributions?
I don’t think so
We already see signs of things to come. According to an article by Arthur Delaney on the Huffington post. Blue Cross is suing the state of Maine because Blue Cross wants to raise its premiums by 18.5% Where is Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins when the State of Maine needs them? Be prepared for similar increases. And don’t get sick. The death panels employed by insurance companies will cut you off the instant treating your illness threatens your bottom line. Is there any wonder that the latest issue of the AARP magazine has an article on how to fight your insurance company. The timing couldn’t be better.
Truth told. The American people deserve a choice. If you don’t mind giving their money away to private insurance companies, to Wall Street, to K Street and to the Hill, fine. Let them. If you want to try a non-profit coop, fine, but bear in mind, with the serious money problem health insurance companies have, don’t expect much of a discount.
Or if you want to buy your insurance from a public plan like Medicare, where your health care dollar will actually go to year health care rather than to the pockets of lobbyists and politicians, this too should be your right. That’s what the public option is all about.
Posted by: William Joseph Miller | October 12, 2009, 6:17 pm 6:17 pm
Public Option? God no….talk about be overcharged……..no no no.
Posted by: PotatoeGater22 | October 12, 2009, 7:25 pm 7:25 pm
we all want somthing for nothing.the public option is all about something for nothing. then we all get something for nothing we will get what we apid for….nothing.
Posted by: catman | October 12, 2009, 7:33 pm 7:33 pm
catman | Oct 12, 2009 7:33:17 PM – It’s worked very well in Cananda, England and pretty much every other civilized country! Iraq even has Universal HC that we pay for thanks to President Bush.
Posted by: Try the truth | October 13, 2009, 10:00 am 10:00 am