Pennsylvania representative asks Ario to probe AHIP, Humana lobbying

The chairman of the Pennsylvania House Insurance Committee has asked the Pennsylvania Insurance Department to investigate health insurance industry lobbying, especially the TV advertisements of America’s Health Insurance Plans, on national health care reform.

K Street preps for healthcare Round 2

“August recess was a missed opportunity. So much discussion was focused on whether or not to create a government-run insurance program. That was a distraction,” said Robert Zirkelbach, the spokesman for America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP).

We need Dave Johnson to do justice to this article.

As of now it looks like the final bill will contain taxes on employer paid health benefits to pay for subsidies to low income Americans to buy private insurance and a mandate that everyone have insurance. In other words a bail out for health insurance companies.

There is no popular support for taxes on employer paid health benefits. It is one of many reasons that John McCain went down to a landslide defeat.

No Republican will vote for this. Democrats will take all the blame for a tax increase to pay for a bail out of insurance companies.

It will NOT expand access to health care. It will be very unpopular. If Obama or any other Democrat thinks that AHIP will have their backs they are out of their mind.

Liberals need to block this and save the party from the leadersheep.

Of course, that's not what they're calling it. All the more reason we should do so. From masslib* at Alegre's:

AHIP thinks we should have an open and honest debate on single payer. Good for them for putting the people first, for wanting Americans to have all relevant information on which health reform proposals will best help them and their families. Really, this is a shining example of corporate social responsibility:

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It seems that AHIP's widdle feelings have been hurt. They feel that they have been unfairly attacked. For us it is a good sign. It means that they have been feeling the heat.

One reason I have advocated picketing insurance parasites and picketing their events is that people under attack often make mistakes. It is very difficult to maintain focus and when people are calling you blood sucking parasites and murder by spread sheet. Politicians are trained to handle this sort of thing, but trade associations and CEO's are more accustomed to working behind the scenes.

Keep up the pressure. It is only a question of time before they do something really stupid.

Insurers defend rescissions, take heat for lack of transparency

Rep. Joe Barton (R, Texas), followed that response: "Doesn't it bother you that people are going to die because you insist on reviewing a policy somebody took out in good faith and forgot to tell you they had been treated for acne?"

Don Hamm, president and chief executive officer of Assurant Health, gave the only reply: "Yes, it does. We regret the necessity it has to occur even a single time."

Of course Joe Barton could do something about that by co-sponsoring HR 676.

Bara Vaida, National Journal

The health insurance industry is unpopular, a fact that is not lost on Democratic lawmakers. Polls show that Americans blame insurers more than any other part of the health care system for rising costs. CEOs of AHIP companies are now greeted by protesters, such as those who showed up outside the association's national policy forum in March at a downtown Washington hotel just days after Ignagni pledged to work with Obama and Congress. "AHIP, get off it! People over profit!" chanted the collection of protesters, which included Rep. Eric Massa, D-N.Y.

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AHIP's Campaign for an American "Solution" sent me a link to a transcript of a recent live web chat on health care reform with Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, and Karen Ignagni, president and CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans. Ignani's answers make a joke of Pollack's attempts to make common cause with these creeps.

Ignagni and the people selecting the questions make some classic moves:

When in doubt, don't answer the question:

MarinCA asks: Do your organizations support a public plan option? Why or why not?

Medicare Advantage Sellers Trick Elderly Into Giving Up Benefits
Read it and then send the link on to whoever you think would be interested.

Health Insurance Industry’s Smoke and Mirrors ‘Reform’ Proposal

“If private industry is always more efficient and less costly than government, why is the health insurance industry worried about competition from a government program?” Sinibaldi wonders.

Health insurers pull a fast one in proposed reform

The industry says it will treat all people fairly in return for a government requirement that everyone has to buy their product. But they want to charge different prices for different levels of coverage ...

...Yet if you read the fine print in their plan, it turns out that they're reserving the right to charge different prices for different levels of coverage -- a practice that would effectively keep us where we are, with sick (or potentially sick) people paying more for insurance.

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West Virginia Belly Dancers to Protest for Single Payer Outside Home Office of Congresswoman Capito

US Sen Baucus: Insurers Have To Negotiate On Public Plan

Sen. Max Baucus said Friday the health insurance industry may have to compromise on a public insurance option to cover uninsured people or risk losing a spot at the bargaining table.

Update - please read the National Nurses Movement diary at Open Left.

Pravda:

More Support for Health-Care Fix, But Funding Coverage Still Sticking Point
A coalition of hospitals, insurers, employers, physicians, drug makers and consumers released a report yesterday endorsing a set of policy changes that could cut in half the number of uninsured Americans.

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A Health Plan for All and the Concerns It Raises

“There’s no way to run a side-by-side competition within the current structure,” said Karen Ignagni, the chief executive of America’s Health Insurance Plans, the industry’s trade association. If the unstated and eventual goal of the public plan is to push private insurers out of the way — a de facto nationalization of health care — “let’s have a debate on a government-run system,” Ms. Ignagni said.

You know what? She is absolutely right.

Ezra Klein

Never thought I'd get to write that headline. But it's true. The current Chairman of America's Health Insurance Plans is George Halvorson, CEO of Kaiser Permanente. Halvorson also serves on the Commonwealth Fund's Commission on a High Performance Health System, which just released a plan called "The 2020 Vision." You can download the plan here. I did. And I can give it a recommendation I can rarely offer to health reform proposals: The contents surprise.

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Insurers worried HIPAA expansion could hurt HIT adoption

Further, Ignani said that requiring covered entities to account for all disclosures of personal health information would discourage use of electronic health records systems because of the intense labor required to document all disclosures of electronic data.

AHIP Concerned with Privacy Provisions

AHIP's concerns rest with provisions that would further restrict use of patient data for payment, treatment and operational functions.

Health Care Overhaul Still in ‘Happy Talk’ Stage

Health Insurers Welcome COBRA Subsidy, Leery of Privacy Rules

The federal government would subsidize up to 65% of COBRA health insurance payments for many individuals who have lost their jobs since Sept. 1, 2008, under an $825 billion stimulus package unveiled by House Democrats.

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Clark Newhall writing for the Salt Lake Tribune

The price of our privately run, profit-driven medical-industrial complex has caused this famine. About one-third of every dollar going to health care pays for administrative costs -- for utilization reviewers, for computer programmers, for advertising, for sales managers, for executives of all kinds, for billing clerks, for coding clerks, for CEO bonuses in the millions and hundreds of million -- and for profits.

We are not talking about government waste. We are not talking about the cost of actually treating the sick and nurturing the healthy. We are talking only about the cost of running our profit-making health insurance industry.

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Insurers advance health-care reform plan, but critics blast it

Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the organization, says the plan pushed by AHIP would amount to a “massive public bailout of one of the wealthiest private industries in America.”

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In their article about AHIP's plan to kill the public plan option, CJR misses the point. In all the coverage of the health care debate, no one quotes John Conyers or any other single payer advocate. Single Payer has more support than any other plan, more support among the House of Representatives, more support among doctors, more support among nurses, more support with the general public. But no single payer voice is allowed in the media.

Have you written a letter to the editor in support of single payer yet? It is our best option for getting the word out.

U.S. Health Industry to Fight Public Insurance Option in Reform Proposals

Perhaps no idea is more disliked by the U.S. health insurance industry than a proposal by Democratic President-elect Barack Obama to have a public health insurance plan competing directly with them as part of his broad pledge to reform the country''s ailing health care system.

The industry is "going to fight and they're going to kick and they're going to scream," said Sam Fleet, president and chief executive officer of AmWins Group Benefits, a wholesale brokerage. "The last thing private insurers want is the federal government to compete with them."

Charlie Rangel is one of our health care heros. That’s right, the Chair of the powerful Ways and Means committee supports single payer. Think of what that means to our movement!

All of a sudden Whoever kidnapped Joshua Micah Marshall is floating pseudo scandals. Who is feeding his publication this drivel? We have no way of knowing, but I suspect it is the same anonymous sources who are attacking Pete Stark.

CQ Health Beat News

House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee Chairman Pete Stark , D-Calif., never shy about attacking industry profits, also issued a statement slamming the private health plans in Medicare, known as Medicare Advantage plans, for making big money at the expense of taxpayers and health plan enrollees.

Now we know who is going after Pete Stark.
Anonymous Industry Sources Control Congress

Coverage mandate will fail as a healthcare reform plan

It’s time for Congress to stop getting carried away with financial bailouts for big industries, especially when it comes to some of the most-profitable and least-responsible companies: the health-insurance giants.

Two major trade lobbies, America’s Health Insurance Plans and the Blue Cross-Blue Shield Association, have announced that they would be willing to end their disgraceful practice of excluding people from coverage based on their health or age. In exchange, they want the federal government to force uninsured Americans to buy private insurance.

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