Wendell Potter On The Health Care Bill (It's Bad)

From The Raw Story:

Potter pointed out, for example, that many plans -- even after consumers received proposed government subsidies to help pay for them -- would come with high deductibles that prohibit people from using their insurance or cause them the kind of financial hardships that healthcare reform was purported to prevent.

“What worries me,” he said, “is people who are forced to buy coverage and all they can afford to buy is a high deductible. And if they get really sick then they have to pay so much out of their own pockets that they’re going to be filing for bankruptcy and losing their homes.”

In the Senate bill, in particular, Potter noted, some people will be buying insurance that will only cover roughly 60 percent of their medical costs if they get sick.

“There are a lot of people who don’t have insurance now because they can’t afford premiums,” he said. “They certainly couldn’t afford premiums plus the out-of-pocket expenses in today’s market.”

Potter asserted that the current legislation will, in large part, simply move millions of people from being uninsured to underinsured, or from insured to underinsured. Citing a 2007 study by the Commonwealth Fund, he said there are already over 25 million Americans who fall into the category of the underinsured.

Potter also noted the deleterious effect of cost shifting on small businesses. Many small business owners will earn just enough to be denied subsidies.

“After a certain income level, there are no subsidies,” Potter explained. “But you still have to buy coverage. And I’m concerned that after you get above the median level of income, you’ll find that a lot of people who don’t get subsidies will probably be forced to buy coverage. But the only coverage they’ll be able to buy will make them underinsured.”

Those Greedy Bastards!

Health Insurers Funded Chamber Attack Ads

By Peter H. Stone

Updated at 6:45 p.m.

Just as dealings with the Obama administration and congressional Democrats soured last summer, six of the nation's biggest health insurers began quietly pumping big money into third-party television ads aimed at killing or significantly modifying the major health reform bills moving through Congress.

That money, between $10 million and $20 million, came from Aetna, Cigna, Humana, Kaiser Foundation Health Plans, UnitedHealth Group and Wellpoint, according to two health care lobbyists familiar with the transactions. The companies are all members of the powerful trade group America's Health Insurance Plans.

The funds were solicited by AHIP and funneled to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to help underwrite tens of millions of dollars of television ads by two business coalitions set up and subsidized by the chamber. Each insurer kicked in at least $1 million and some gave multimillion-dollar donations.

Health Insurance Company Stock Soaring

I know the stock market is not the best indicator of financial health...unless you are an insurance company!

Sick For Profit Dot Com

Quote Of The Day: Matt Taibbi

Without a public option, any effort at health care reform will be as meaningful as a manicure for a gunshot victim.

What's The Difference?

T.R. Reid, of The Washington Post, does some actual journalism on the differences between American health care and foreign health care. Guess what?..

The key difference is that foreign health insurance plans exist only to pay people's medical bills, not to make a profit. The United States is the only developed country that lets insurance companies profit from basic health coverage.

H/T The Daily Howler

Tom Daschle, Secret Lobbyist

Come on, Obama! Either hire the guy away from the moneyed interests, or drop him like a bad habit!

NYT Pulls Back the Curtain on Tom Daschle, WH & Industry Front Man
By: Scarecrow Saturday August 22, 2009 6:07 pm

The New York Times does a disturbing piece on what a swell guy Tom Daschle is to be so willing to privately advise President Obama on health care while he serves as a paid political consultant to a myriad of health industry clients.

Mr. Daschle, who conveniently neglected to pay taxes on incomes only the wealthy understand, isn't a registererd lobbyist, though one wonders why he's exempt. Instead, Tom, who works for Alston & Bird, prefers to be called a "resource."

“I am most comfortable with the word resource.”

Well, no kidding. So what does a "resource" do?

1. He promotes the idea of co-ops. And just by coincidence:

It is an idea that happens to dovetail with the interests of many Alston & Bird clients, like the insurance giant UnitedHealth and the Tennessee Hospital Association. . . .

Friends and associates of Mr. Daschle say the interests of Alston & Bird’s clients have no influence on his views. They say he sees no conflict in advising private clients on the one hand and advising the White House on the other, because he offers the same assessment to everyone: Though he has often said that he favors a government-run insurance option, the Senate will not pass it.

And why are we not surprised that "friends and associates of Mr. Daschle" would think there's no conflict problem?

2. He tells his private clients how to interact with his government friends:

Clients of Alston & Bird say Mr. Daschle advises them, sometimes indirectly through the firm’s registered lobbyists, about the personalities of his former colleagues, as well as strategies to achieve their policy goals.

That's nice. I wonder what the best approach is for talking to the President about how to stall or undermine effective health care reform?

3. He presumes to speak for the Administration's plan:

Mr. Daschle does not shrink from his leading role in the debate. Speaking at a hospital industry conference last week, for example, he accepted billing as “the architect of President Obama’s health care plan.”

Before such industry groups, Mr. Daschle can sometimes cheer on their lobbying efforts, as he did at a meeting on Aug. 8 of chain drugstore executives when he urged them to push lawmakers to raise certain Medicaid reimbursements.

4. He promotes an agenda -- the co-op concept and deferred triggers for a public plan that he developed with Dole, et al -- that is inconsistent with the majority of Congressional Democrats and the American people:

Their proposal, released in June, was among the first to spell out the idea of helping states establish health insurance “co-op plans with consumer boards.”

Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota and one of Mr. Daschle’s closest friends, began pitching the idea at about the same time and has become its champion. . . .

As a backstop, their plan provided that if state co-ops or other programs failed to meet certain cost and coverage goals in five years, the president could create a public plan on a fast track without threat of a Senate filibuster.

That feature, known as a trigger, was briefly acknowledged as another possible compromise by the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel. Though it was little discussed, Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine and one of the Finance Committee’s group of six, has recently expressed support for the concept, and committee aides say the idea is under consideration.

5. He's setting the agenda for the "gang of six."

Mr. Conrad is among six members of the Senate Finance Committee working on their own compromise proposal that aides say looks increasingly like the Daschle-Dole-Baker report.

It's just a coincidence that every one of these proposals has produced a misstep by the White House and further loss of trust by the Democratic base.

If you're not yet disgusted by this blatant example of Washington's legal insider corruption, read the rest of the article. But this is sickening. It doesn't matter whether you think Tom Daschle is a force for good or ill, his dual role is unprincipled, too cute by half. And he's being allowed to mainline his industry-paid-for views right into the White House and the Senate Finance Committee. No wonder the President [continues] to praise the Republicans in the gang of six for their "hard work."

Does the rest of Congress care about this? Does anyone?

The President of the United States can meet with and take advice from anyone he chooses. But at a time when this President is struggling to regain the confidence of his own base and the American people, it's disappointing -- or revealing -- that this President continues to rely so heavily on health care reform advice from those with privileged access and conflicted allegiances to those whose reform the President says the nation's health care depends.

h/t FDL

Wednesday Cartoon Fun: Health Scare Edition

Monday Bonus Cartoon Fun: Health Insurance Edition

You, Dear Lady, Are An Idiot

Sully doesn't need me to help bash Sarah Palin, nor, apparently, does Southern Beale. I post this not to disparage Sarah Palin (though her disparagement is fine with me), but to illustrate the health insurance nonsense she spouts.

Don’t Talk To Me About Death Panels

Don’t talk to me about death panels, Sarah Palin.

You, who so carelessly bolstered a lie about healthcare reform to score a cheap political point; you, the most craven of political opportunists, who fearmongers about some dystopian socialist/fascist fantasyland; you, who earlier this year were only too happy to accept free medical, dental and veterinary care from the U.S. military for Alaska’s remote villages; you, dear lady, are an idiot.

In your free market wonderland everyone somehow manages to get healthcare, even those who are poor or live in isolated areas, though the poor and isolated in your own state required assistance from the federal government.

And despite all of this, you appear blithely unaware that the free market healthcare system we have now does, indeed, have “death panels.” I’ve been part of a death panel conversation. I know about death panels.

You have no idea what it’s like to be called into a sterile conference room with a hospital administrator you’ve never met before and be told that your mother’s insurance policy will only pay for 30 days in ICU. You can't imagine what it's like to be advised that you need to “make some decisions,” like whether your mother should be released “HTD” which is hospital parlance for “home to die,” or if you want to pay out of pocket to keep her in the ICU another week. And when you ask how much that would cost you are given a number so impossibly large that you realize there really are no decisions to make. The decision has been made for you. "Living will" or no, it doesn't matter. The bank account and the insurance policy have trumped any legal document.

If this isn’t a “death panel” I don’t know what is.

So don’t talk to me about “death panels” you heartless, cruel, greedy sons of bitches, who are only too happy to keep the profits rolling in to the big insurance companies while you spout your mealy-mouthed bumper sticker slogans about the evils of socialism. You don't even know what socialism is. You don't know what government healthcare is. You have no fucking clue about anything except that you lost the last election and you're pissed off.

You are young. Your parents are still alive. You don’t know enough to take any of this seriously. It's all an exercise in political theater for you. But that will change. We all get older. The time will arrive, someday, when you are tasked with caring for someone you love who is seriously ill. You will be ushered in to that sterile hospital conference room with an administrator you do not know, where you are told to "make plans" for a day you never hoped to see. And then you will get your education.

If on that day you still think the healthcare system we have now is fabulous and worth lying, cheating and threatening people to maintain, I can only conclude that you lack even the tiniest grain of a soul.

h/t C&L

John McCain Will Let You Die (not on purpose!)

Over at The Edge of the American West there's a post exposing how horrible it would be to need a doctor if McCain becomes president.

I have grown sick of shadows, so I’m going to get a torch.

John McCain’s health care plan is rubbish. So says everyone. Most of the summaries I’ve seen have focused on the fact that twenty million will likely lose their employer-cushioned coverage, and that the individual market is horrible to those who have been ill, or for those who are obese.

The plan is rubbish, for all the reasons cited. But it’s rubbish for more reasons. It’s rubbish because it’s made of rubbish.

The individual market is horrible to those have been ill, but when it’s stated like that, it sounds like something only the sick or chronically ill will have to worry about.* And most of the people writing about it are either young, and eminently insurable on account of being young, or have comfortable employer-based insurance. I don’t think they get quite how much the individual market sucks for a normal person.

So let’s play pretend, because let’s be clear: this is a bad idea for everyone.

John McCain is elected, and the health care coverage of twenty million people gets dropped. Two of those people, Jack and Jill, are a couple in their fifties. Jack and Jill are in excellent health and middle class. Absolutely no chronic conditions. Great CON. Neither of them smoke. And we’ll assume that they’re also of normal weight.

Let’s play on eHealthInsurance.com. Jill is 52 and Jack is 56. For $400 a month, they can get coverage. This is not nice coverage. This is coverage that tends to have a multi-thousand dollar deductible, no prescription coverage, no doctor’s visits coverage. If they want an HMO-style plan with co-pays and prescription coverage, call it $1100. (And of course, their risk is evaluated individually.)

But let’s make it a little more realistic. Jill is overweight. Not obese, mind you. Let’s say she has a BMI of 27. This varies a bit by company, but add 25% onto her premium. Jack smokes. He’s been trying to quit, but he picked up this habit back in the 60s and it’s been hard to kick. Jack is probably now uninsurable. (Were he younger, figure another 25%)

Actually, they probably both are. In their fifties, they’re bad risks. When they had employer-based coverage, this wasn’t a big deal, because their own personal risk wasn’t evaluated. It is now.

And we’ve spotted them perfect health and perfect health histories, mind you. According to this study, the average American adult fills nine prescriptions a year. Someone in her fifties: 13. So surely it’s not insane to think that someone in her fifties might be on one or two medications.

Now, we can assume that the market will change a little bit, and that Jack and Jill might have a tax credit to play with. That isn’t going to make them younger, or a better risk. This plan is cruel to boomers.

So who in this country is this plan supposed to benefit?