Reform Rx – GOP Healthy Insurance Companies Bill

Republicans are finally getting to work and producing a GOP alternative health care bill that offers the public the option to evaluate their commitment to reform. Of course it does not have the diabolical public option. The GOP says it is all about costs and obviously concludes it is not about care.

Here are key emerging features:

- Insurance companies can continue refusing to cover pre-existing conditions so that the industry’s financial health does not deteriorate.
- The bill will allow the purchasing of health insurance policies across state lines so that insurance companies will be able to cherry pick where to sell based on lack of regulation and other requirements that suppress healthy profits for insurance companies. As a bonus, insurance companies could decide to charter in weak regulatory states to build low benefit–high profit plans to sell in other states to help the bottom line.
- The government does not get diabolically involved in health care except to encourage expansion of expensive state based high risk pools to help ensure that insurance companies avoid costly individuals so that insurance companies do not have any risks of low profits.
- Small businesses will be permitted to band together to buy health care so that after satisfying insurance company risk elimination and eliminating pre-existing conditions risks another market opens up to insurance companies bolstering their overall income. The pools themselves or insurance company determinations will reject businesses with high risk individuals to keep costs low and profits high.
- Medical malpractice awards for pain and suffering will be capped at $250,000 so that insurance companies will not have to endure the pain and suffering of paying out of profits for things like an individual’s loss of income for life or decades of misery.

Republicans do get velvet glove tough with the insurance industry in one area. There will not be a mandate that everyone must be covered which does not deliver another new market to insurance companies. Since the Republican plan also does not include tax credits for the poor that would make sense under such a mandate, a conclusion that insurance companies only need to have a giant profit protection guarantee rather than a mammoth one must have been reached.

Finally don’t worry, illegal aliens and abortions are not covered to keep the base fired up on social issues while shoveling the cash into health insurance company coffers.

GOP: Guaranteeing Outlandish Profits!

Reform Rx - Snowe Weary

Good morning, happy Halloween, and just in case you did not have a nightmare, read the morning papers:

Snowe reaffirms her opposition to public option
- Portland Press Herald
Snowe on health care legislation: 'I will try to make it better'
- Morning Sentinel, Waterville
SNOWE STRIVING FOR BEST BILL
Senator hopes to improve health care measure, even if she votes against it
- Kennebec Journal, Augusta

In a story by Matt Wickenheiser, Maine Today Media has decided to become a part of the the legendary Snowe-making machinery equating her serious style with wisdom. Giving Senator Snowe occasional good marks for diligence and even level-headiness may be appropriate. However, just being earnest does necessarily yield wise statecraft. Senator Snowe is fallible, subject to misdirection, can be close-minded, and simply be dead wrong. That's the case with health care reform, Snowe has a nice bedside manner but her diagnosis is inaccurate and her prescription is full of complications for the patient.

Here's a few outtakes from the Maine Today Media piece that cause pauses:

Sen. Olympia Snowe reiterated one of her key positions Friday, saying she won't support a Senate bill that contains a public option.

The most vital tool to control costs effectively to cover the most individuals, supported by a majority of both houses of Congress, the President, the American people, and constituents in Maine continues to earn a complete dismissal.

She again suggested her alternative to a full government-backed plan: a fallback, safety-net plan that would be triggered in states where insurance companies fail to offer affordable plans.

Senator Snowe continues to tout her plan for a triggered public option fashioned for failure despite compromise after compromise and concession after concession that have brought us to the present "opt-out" public option version.

"I just think it's going to be very difficult to get it done by Christmas," she said.

A procrastinator's persistent petulance prevails.

"Introducing a government approach in an already dysfunctional market would truly threaten the ability to create a competitive market," Snowe said.

Oozing gravitas apparently can obliterate a lack of logic in any utterance. Faith-based market worship blinds her.

Snowe said that what has happened in the insurance industry has been "unconscionable."

Those are fighting words! Run up the white flag!

Let's put Senator Snowe's dalliance with health care reform in some sort of perspective. She has diagnosed a dysfunctional market. The dysfunction comes about from an insurance industry engaged in activity that is "unconscionable". Majorities of her colleagues, Americans, and Maine constituents see the value of a public option as the corrective solution. And, she seems to agree that a public option can fix things too. Senator Snowe has thus concluded that threatening an industry engaged in "unconscionable" practices in a dysfunctional market they brought about ought to be threatened with the fix for a few years. Maybe they will the play nice.

Senator Snowe: We're weary of your delaying tactics and continual preference for corporate entities over critical individual needs; please get with the program or at the very least stop obstructing the process by seeking concessions that hurt us.

Reform Rx – Vote NO on One

A clear connection unites these issues. Beyond the debates of who, what, when, and where lays the essential interwoven question of why we ought to reform health care and why we must guarantee equality for all. The answer rests on choosing that which is morally right and affirming that “we hold these truths to be self-evident.”

Reform Rx - BOO to Seniors

Let freedom ring;
Let fear upswing.
You sacrificed dearly,
To be frightened insincerely?

60 Plus a right wing group that tries to pass itself off as an AARP equivalent is spending two million dollars in a fear smear that tries to frighten seniors. Here is an excerpt from their press release on the media buy:

October 28, 2009 - ALEXANDRIA, VA – The 60 Plus Association today announced a new advertising campaign targeting Senator Snowe. The $2.0 million ad buy, which will also run in Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Louisiana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota, celebrates our greatest generation, asks seniors to call Senator Snowe and demand she fight the massive cuts to Medicare the current health care reform legislation before the Senate would bring.

Here is the actual Maine version of the ad found on You Tube. It is easy to identify the fear tactics used by 60 Plus. However, the organization actually has the callous audacity to accuse health care reformers of being the fear mongers!

“Even with Halloween around the corner, Senator Snowe shouldn’t be scaring seniors with the threat of Washington bureaucrats refusing care or making health care decisions instead of your doctor,” said Jim Martin, President of 60 Plus.

There is one simple thing we can all do when these ads start running amok across our screens here in Maine. Adopt a senior. And if you are senior, adopt a peer. Find an senior neighbor or relative and ask them if they saw the ad and if it caused any concern. Tell them that health care reform is about improving health care for all Americans and not to the detriment of anyone else. Listen and share your views in a caring manner. Better health care for them, their children and grandchildren is the fulfillment of their sacrifice. And be sure to thank them for bequeathing to us a country where universal health care is possible.

Here are two timeless quotes to heed today that inspired the greatest generation.

Consider this more complete and in context famous quote by President Roosevelt at his first Inaugural Address in 1933:
"This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."

And at President Roosevelt's 1944 State of the Union Address he proposed a Second Bill of Rights that included:
"...the right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health."

Pass health care now. We are fearless.

Reform Rx – Opting In to Opt Out

A public option will now get debated in the Senate. The opt-out option announced today by Senate Majority Leader Reid is far superior to the trigger in many ways.

Consistent broad voter support of a public option and your activist efforts kept this fight for fairness alive. The health care lobby came extremely close to killing the public option in the Senate. It is imperative to remind ourselves that they will not surrender. They will try to influence the processes at every single step. And rest assured that they and their surrogates will also resort again to fear tactics.

We need to ensure that the Senate Democratic caucus stands together and that no single member abandons the aspirations and essential needs of the citizens who gave the Democratic party a mandate by slinking off and joining the Republicans in a filibuster even if they might be individually disinclined to support the final bill.

Despite the efforts of our own Senator Snowe, her trigger trick is not the public option version that Senator Reid will offer for debate. But again be forewarned, we have not heard the end of the trigger and the opt-out replacement with a trigger is entirely possible. Maine citizens need to tell Senator Snowe to abandon her allegiance to the trigger; her constituents do not want it

We must intensify pressure on both Senators Snowe and Collins to support substantive health care reform with a robust public option. It is also critical that we be wary of too much attention being given to our Senators when it might cross the threshold into too much concession. We expect them to support our interests and not be granted the capability to barter away our hopes.

(From single payer to supporting a public option as a necessary compromise and now to using opt out as a tactic to win the compromise, my line in the sand is now drawn.)

Reform Rx – Now playing, “Trigger Kill Bill”

Every great once in a while, pulling a loaded gun’s trigger accidently causes a misfire injury or death. That’s accidently; one could of course deviously rig things for an intentional result. However, this column is not about hashing out 2nd amendment arguments but trying to dissect Senator Snowe’s politicking.

Amid a very good analysis by Jacob S. Hacker in The New Republic regarding why a trigger for health care reform will not work, this gem glistened:

“As is well recognized, triggers are generally designed to create political cover, not effective policy.”

In scrutinizing the possible effects of a trigger and the opportunity for insurance companies to anticipate it and thwart its effectiveness, Hacker comes to this unsurprising conclusion:

“Added to the Senate bills, a trigger would represent a backdoor way of killing the public health insurance option that a majority of Americans (and U.S. Senators) support.”

Perhaps this is Senator Snowe’s objective all along.

The TNR piece has enough good information in it to help anyone compose a very good letter to Harry Reid and Christopher Dodd about not including a trigger in a combined Senate bill. Whoops, left out Max Baucus…must be an oversight, sorry misplaced his contact information.

Reform Rx - Snowe's Body Language

Statement from Maine People’s Alliance Executive Director Jesse Graham:

“For months now, political analysts throughout the country have been attempting to divine Senator Olympia Snowe’s intentions towards health care reform. Now, it’s come down to reading her body language.

With a single sentence to reporters and a nod of her head as she walked down a Senate corridor, Snowe today appeared to say she would filibuster a health care bill if it contains a public option.

If that interpretation is correct, Senator Snowe would be signaling her intention to deny the people of Maine the affordable health coverage they desperately need.

Three recent polls have all shown around 58% of Mainers in support of a public health insurance option, with only 35% opposed. A recent Democracy Corps poll showed that a vote against real health care reform would reduce her electoral support to 44%, with another 44% of Mainers surveyed opposing her reelection.

Premiums have risen astronomically for Maine people over the past decade and Anthem, Maine’s largest insurer, is now engaged in a legal battle with the state to raise them even higher. They have proposed an unconscionable 18.5% increase for individual plans.

A public plan would keep insurance companies accountable and guarantee an affordable health care for people in Maine.”