Oct 12, 12:52 PM EDT
Seniors lobby challenges health insurance report
By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR and ERICA WERNER Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Supporters of President Barack Obama's drive to remake health care are pushing back against a dire report from the insurance industry warning of hefty new costs for consumers from the latest legislation.
"I really don't think it's worth the paper it's written on," AARP Executive Vice President John Rother told reporters Monday. "If anyone believes it, that's a problem."
The study commissioned by America's Health Insurance Plans put the White House, congressional Democrats and their allies on the defensive on the eve of a critical vote in the Senate Finance Committee.
It marked a shift in strategy by the health insurance industry, which had been working for months behind the scenes to help shape health care legislation. With the Finance Committee set to vote Tuesday on a sweeping bill the industry fears could result in a loss of revenue, the insurers suddenly went on the attack, in dramatic fashion.
Late Sunday, AHIP sent reporters and its member companies a new accounting firm study that projects the legislation would add $1,700 a year to the cost of family coverage in 2013, when most of the major provisions in the bill would be in effect.
Premiums for a single person would go up by $600 more than would be the case without the legislation, the PricewaterhouseCoopers analysis concluded in the study commissioned by the insurance group.
"Several major provisions in the current legislative proposal will cause health care costs to increase far faster and higher than they would under the current system," Karen Ignagni, the top industry lobbyist in Washington, wrote in a memo to insurance company CEOs.
The industry said the cost increases result from new taxes and a weakening of the penalties for failing to get insurance that would let Americans postpone getting coverage until they get sick.
Democrats and their allies criticized the report as biased. Health economist Len Nichols of the New America Foundation contended that, among other problems, the study failed to take into account the impact of subsidies that would help low- and middle-income people buy coverage. He said it also left out a key expected impact of a proposed new tax on high-value insurance plans, which is a reduction in the use of health services.
"It was paid for by people who are not interested in an objective analysis of the truth but are interested in a particular point of view being inserted into the political process right now," Nichols said.
Spokesmen for the White House and for Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., attacked the report along similar lines. "It's a health insurance company hatchet job, plain and simple," said Baucus spokesman Scott Mulhauser.
The Senate Finance Committee is slated to vote on its 10-year, $829 billion bill on Tuesday, but more important to the industry are the steps beyond the panel's decision.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., will be merging the bill with a companion measure from the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, with the goal of a sweeping, affordable bill. In the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Democratic leaders have been pulling together legislation from three committees.
Unlike the 1990s, when it contributed to the failure of President Bill Clinton's health overhaul, the insurance industry has been attracted by the promise of millions of more people getting coverage. Translation: millions of new consumers buying policies.
The Baucus plan got a boost last week when the Congressional Budget Office estimated it would cover 94 percent of eligible Americans while reducing the federal deficit.
But the PricewaterhouseCoopers analysis attempted to get at a different issue - costs for privately insured individuals.
It concluded that a combination of factors in the bill - and decisions by lawmakers as they amended it - would raise costs.
The chief reason, said the report, is a decision by lawmakers to weaken proposed penalties for failing to get health insurance. The bill would require insurers to take all applicants, doing away with denials for pre-existing health problems. In return, all Americans would be required to carry coverage, either through an employer or a government program, or by buying it themselves.
But the CBO estimated that even with new federal subsidies, some 17 million Americans would still be unable to afford health insurance. Faced with that affordability problem, senators opted to ease the fines for going without coverage from the levels Baucus originally proposed. The industry says that will only let people postpone getting coverage until they get sick.
But the industry stopped short of signaling all-out opposition. "We will continue to work with policymakers in support of workable bipartisan reform," Ignagni said in her memo.
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On the Net:
America's Health Insurance Plans: http://www.ahip.org/
Senate Finance Committee: http://finance.senate.gov/
Hello everyone,
I am a 27 year old that has just found out I have MS. That is why I've been trying to get involved with healthcare reform. I've donated the little extra money I have, I have signed petitions, I have called my senators (many times) and I have written and called the Whitehouse many times but I feel like we are just spinning our wheels. As opponents to healthcare reform step up their lies and attacks I think that we need to step up our responses. I am NOT talking about violence. I am talking about dramatic peaceful protest ones that will make an impact and stick in peoples minds. Ones that bring the true cost of our current healthcare system back to the for-front. I think we need to redirect the media attention to WHY we need this reform. Lets show them why, remind the visually why we need this and who will suffer if we fail.
I belong to an email list and we have been passing ideas around and would like to get a few of these ideas started but alas we don't know where to start. I'm writing to everyone I can think of to see if anyone can get these going. Here are the ideas. First, one suggestion was made to hold a welcoming committee for congress on the congress steps. This welcome would consist of sick people that NEED this healthcare reform. Let introduce the congress to the sick people their decisions will affect. Lets give them faces to remember when they vote and negotiate on our lives. Again let me reiterate that this would be a dramatic yet PEACEFUL protest. Another idea is to ask people to send in pics and stories of health insurance companies murder victims (people who have died do to corrupt health insurance companies practices) and we put them on billboards. We also collect them and put them in a book with the birth and death years on the bottom of the pics and send the books to all the members of congress. We could also have protests were every person has a sign with a different persons pic and we march. Just imagine seeing thousands of people marching with pictures, each one different, and knowing that each person marching is also a victim who no longer has a voice. Imagine receiving a book of faces and knowing that they died because of greed. Lets remind the country what this movement is about. Lets make sure that the dead are not forgotten. Lets speak up for those who can no longer speak. Please if anyone can help us get this going let me know.
Thanks for your time.
Emily Votaw
WASHINGTON — When supporters of President-elect Barack Obamahold house parties to discuss ways of fixing the health care system over the next two weeks, they may find some unexpected guests.
The health insurance industry is encouraging its employees and satisfied customers to attend. A trade group representing some of the nation’s largest health care businesses, including drug companies, is organizing several meetings. The American Medical Association and other medical societies are encouraging doctors to get involved.
The Maine Medical Association will convene a community discussion on Dec. 30. Group Health Cooperative of Seattle has sent e-mail messages to 35,000 subscribers encouraging their participation, and one of its doctors plans to lead a session next Tuesday.
The meetings, originally envisioned as a way to make good on Mr. Obama’s commitment to “health care reform that comes from the ground up,” could thus turn into living-room lobbying sessions involving some of the biggest stakeholders in the health care industry.
Stephanie Cutter, a spokeswoman for the Obama transition team, said that more than 4,200 meetings had been scheduled, and more are in the works. The first ones were held on Sunday. Attendance is expected to average at least a dozen people per meeting.
Those who attend are not required to disclose their employers or affiliations. Some Obama advisers have expressed concern that people from the health care industry may try to pack the neighborhood meetings. But Ms. Cutter said they were welcome to attend the gatherings. “These are listening sessions,” Ms. Cutter said. “We are trying to find people who share Obama’s goal of health care reform, even if they disagree on the specifics.”
Some of the people holding health care meetings were volunteers in Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign. Some come from consumer groups like Health Care for America Now or from the Service Employees International Union, a strong, early supporter of Mr. Obama.
Others come from the health care and insurance industries.
Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for America’s Health Insurance Plans, the main lobby for insurance companies, said the group was “mobilizing our grass-roots coalitions and encouraging industry employees” to participate in meetings for the Obama transition team.
Mary R. Grealy, president of the Health Care Leadership Council, which represents large health care corporations, said her group intended to hold community meetings in California, Georgia and Oklahoma, among other states. The council is a coalition of chief executives from 40 companies including Aetna, Ascension Health, CVS Caremark, Eli Lilly,Medtronic, Merck and Pfizer.
Before Mr. Obama even takes office, insurance companies are raising questions about a central element of his plan that calls for creation of a new public insurance program to compete directly with private insurers. A public program would, they fear, have inherent unfair advantages.
Insurers are also fighting Mr. Obama’s proposal to cut the Medicare payments they receive for providing comprehensive care to more than 10 million of the 44 million Medicare beneficiaries. Many independent studies have found that Medicare overpays the private plans.
One of the industry’s goals is to galvanize members of its Coalition for Medicare Choices, a group of 750,000 beneficiaries who like their private Medicare Advantage plans.
The industry-sponsored coalition recently told Medicare recipients that if the cuts occurred, “millions of seniors could see their benefits reduced, face higher out-of-pocket costs or lose their Medicare Advantage coverage entirely.”
The Obama transition team has prepared discussion guides for people who participate in the health care meetings to be held in homes, community centers, churches, libraries and coffee shops around the country.
A major purpose of the meetings, as described in the discussion guides, is to identify people with “compelling personal stories that illustrate the need for health care reform.”
People with such stories often make effective advocates and lobbyists, challenging “the special interests” that Mr. Obama attacked in his presidential campaign.
The guides tell discussion leaders how to deal with unruly participants and how to report the results of their deliberations to the Obama transition team. They also provide a summary of Mr. Obama’s plan to “expand coverage to all Americans.” Insurers said they were particularly concerned about Mr. Obama’s proposal for “a National Health Insurance Exchange that offers a range of private insurance options as well as a new public plan option.”
Former Senator Tom Daschle, whom Mr. Obama has chosen to be secretary of health and human services, said the public plan would be “modeled after Medicare” and would have “tremendous clout to bargain for the lowest prices” from health care providers.
But Karen M. Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, and H. Edward Hanway, the chairman of Cigna, said the proposed new public program could lead to higher costs for people who already had private insurance.
Like Medicare and Medicaid, they said, a new public program would probably underpay doctors and hospitals. To make up for the underpayments, health care providers say, they charge more to consumers and employers who buy commercial insurance.
“A new public program similar to Medicare would exacerbate cost-shifting, which already adds $1,500, or 10 percent, to the average premium for a family of four,” Ms. Ignagni said.
Alissa Fox, a vice president of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, asked, “Why do you need a new public program?”
Insurers said last month that they would accept all applicants for coverage, regardless of illness or disability, if Congress required everyone to have insurance. Without such an individual mandate, insurers say, many people will not buy health insurance until they need it.
But Richard J. Kirsch, the national campaign manager of Health Care for America Now, the consumer group, said a new public program was essential.
“Public plans like Medicare do a better job of controlling costs,” Mr. Kirsch said. “Private insurers are always looking for ways to avoid paying claims or covering sick people. Their mission is not to provide health care, but to increase shareholders’ profits.”
... you know the ones, the ones you've dodged with your Republican friends and family members. They say never discuss politics or religion with family, but it's time to gently start those long avoided conversations. We can't afford not to.
Here are some thoughts on how to approach it:
Beforehand, try to anticipate the issues that the person cares about and then study-up Obama's positions on those issues from Barack's website, so that you are not caught off-guard without being armed with correct information.
The trick is not to provoke, but to keep as objective, informative and rational as you possibly can about the issues that you discuss.
Listen carefully to the points that the other person is trying to make and empathize whenever you can generally do so. Generally speaking, the more you listen to them, the more open they are to listen to you.
Speak from the heart about why you believe in Obama, but avoid expressing anger or frustration as it can put the other person on the defensive and perhaps even make them feel justified in their views. If the other person begins to get irrationally offensive, calmly explain that you'll be happy to continue the conversation if the person can be rational, calm and factually back-up any emotional accusations. If they can't handle it, then politely tell them that you both need to talk about something else for a while until emotions can be controlled and leave it at that.
Another approach is to have a conversation with another supporter in the presence of one of these people, discussing Obama's stance on topics that you think would appeal to the person. I've actually discovered rather accidentally, that this can be quite transformative for the unaware Republican observer.
Some topics that many Republicans like, but are unaware of are:
No new taxes of any kind for anyone earning less than $250,000/yr which is over 99% of the population.
Zero taxes for Senior citizens (over 65) who earn less than $50,000/yr.
That Barack's Health Care plan is NOT mandatory for everyone, but only for children.
That Barack actually does have quite comprehensive alternative energy plan.
That Barack is not an elitist, but comes from a tight-budgeted, no-frills, middle class family.
That one of Barack's most pressing changes to make in WA is open and transparent government.
These are just a few. If you think of others, please post them in the comments of this blog.
