Subject: [big campaign] New Huff Post from Creamer-Obama Proposal to Regulate Insurance Rate a Game Chan
From: [email-masked]
To: [email-masked], [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 22 Feb 2010 10:10:34 EST
List-Id: <bigcampaign.googlegroups.com>

Obama Proposal to Regulate Premiums of Insurance  Companies is a Game 
Changer 

President Obama’s proposal  to regulate the premiums charged by health 
insurance companies is a game  changer.  And this week’s health  care summit 
will almost certainly serve as a tipping point in the year-long  health care 
debate.  The President’s proposal to regulate health  care premiums forcefully 
reframes the public dialogue in exactly the right terms  – a battle between 
insurance industry profits and the welfare of average  Americans. 
At the same time,  President  Obama has set up a forum that will turn a 
spotlight directly on Republican  intransigence.  He and Democrats  have 
offered a thoroughly debated package of health insurance reforms. On  Thursday – 
right in the glare of the TV lights – Republicans will be forced to  make 
good on their claims to have solutions to fix our broken health care system  as 
well.  Most likely their answers  will once again turn out to be nothing 
more than maneuvers aimed at helping  shore up the profits of the health 
insurance industry and block meaningful  reform. 
In that case, it will be  time for the voters, the President, the 
Congressional Leadership, Members of  Congress, the editorial writers and pundits to 
tell the Republicans in no  uncertain terms that if they are  unwilling to 
lead or follow – the time has come for them get out of the  way. 
After more than a year of debate, Congress must listen to everyday  
Americans, not to the insurance lobbyists who are spending millions to block  
health care reform so they can continue to gorge themselves on profits by  
raising premiums and actually reducing the number of American families  to which 
they provide coverage. 
Congress needs to act now and get  it done right – before other insurance 
companies start demanding huge rate  increases like the 39% increase recently 
announced by Anthem Blue Cross.  We’ve got to rein in the insurance  
companies right now.

The plain fact is that insurance  companies, and their Republican 
defenders, don’t want to pass any health care  reform at all.  The insurance  
companies simply don’t want to insure people who might get sick.  They want to 
continue to be free to find  any excuse not to pay out on policies when people 
become ill.  They want to be able to deny coverage to  people with 
pre-existing conditions, because that’s how they make the most  money.   
And the last thing they want is to have their premiums regulated or  comply 
with the health care reform bill’s requirement that they spend a minimum  
percentage of their revenue on actual health care – instead of the armies  of 
bureaucrats who do nothing but deny claims, battalions of lobbyists to keep 
 things just as they are, and CEO remuneration – like the $73 million 
golden  parachute that went to Cigna’s CEO, Ed Hanway.  They want to be free to 
skim off as many  dollars as possible in profits from every American health 
care dollar.   
Thursday’s televised summit should force the Republicans to defend their  
bogus claims that health care reform will cut Medicare when in fact the AARP  
says it will strengthen Medicare and actually eliminate the infamous “donut 
 hole” gap in coverage that currently exists in the Medicare prescription 
drug  program. 
It will force them to face the fact that – far from hurting small  
businesses as their scare tactics suggest – health care reform will make  affordable 
health insurance available to small businesses and their  employees for the 
first time – and provide federal support that helps small  employers pay 
for health insurance for their employees.  
Finally, the summit will allow the American people to see firsthand, that  
while health care reform will make health insurance affordable to most  
Americans, the Republicans are offering nothing to provide Americans with  
affordable health insurance – either by providing real competition, controlling  
premiums, or subsidizing the cost of those premiums to average families.  
Of course, most importantly, the  Health Care Summit will allow the 
President to make the  case – to key Members of Congress and the public – that we 
simply cannot wait  any longer to pass health care reform.   After all, the 
longer we wait, the  more insurance companies will be free to follow Anthem 
Blue Cross with draconian  rate increases.   
Those increases are caused, in part, because the recession has forced  many 
Americans to drop their health insurance and instead bet that they will not 
 get sick.  As a result, a higher  percentage of those remaining keep their 
insurance because they already have  substantial health care costs.  But  
to keep their profits high, insurance companies then raise their rates to  
account for this “adverse selection” among their customers.  Of course that, 
in turn, forces more and  more people who don’t have current health care 
costs to drop coverage – and the  resulting spiral will leave fewer and fewer 
people covered with health insurance  and skyrocketing premiums for those who 
are covered. 
This is exactly the situation that health insurance reform addresses – by  
providing coverage to everyone, regulating premium levels,  subsidizing 
premiums for those who can’t  afford it, ending discrimination based on 
pre-existing conditions, and setting  minimum “loss ratios” for insurance companies 
(the amount they pay for actual  health care).   
The Anthem Blue Cross rate increases put into high relief the absolute  
urgency of passing health insurance reform. 
That urgency hits home in very personal terms for many American  families.  
We can’t wait for health  care reform because every day more and more 
families go into bankruptcy because  of catastrophic health care costs.  We can’t 
wait, since more and more people die every month because they  didn’t have 
the money for a checkup that would have caught their cancer or heart  
disease.  We can’t wait, because  millions of Americans have been laid off from 
jobs that provided health  insurance – and now find it impossible to get 
insurance they can afford because  they or their spouse have had a serious 
illness – or because premiums are simply  too high for them to afford. 
From the standpoint of Democrats, let’s hope that the summit will help  
make it crystal clear that passing health care reform is good politics.  If, 
after this massive healthcare  debate, we come up empty once again, Democrats 
will get all of the blame for  passing bills in both houses that can be 
totally mischaracterized by the other  side – but we will have none of the 
benefits of passing landmark  legislation.  Nor will we have the  benefit of 
allowing people to see for themselves, that once the bill is passed,  the sky 
doesn’t fall and that the fears so carefully sown by the insurance  industry 
are completely unfounded.  
If it is possible for the Senate to use the reconciliation process to  
include a public option as part of the bargain, as many leading Senators have  
suggested – so much the better. The public option remains one of the most  
important and popular aspects of reform.  But regardless, Congress must take 
action to create a framework for a new  health insurance system built upon 
the premise that everyone can and must have  health insurance they can afford. 
 
The deep pockets of the  insurance industry have allowed them to use 
misleading television advertising to  reduce the popularity of the concept of 
health care reform.  But they have not dented the popularity  of the individual 
components of reform, like regulating premiums; eliminating  denial of 
insurance based on pre-existing conditions; requiring insurance  companies to 
spend a minimum amount of their revenue on actual health care  instead of 
lobbyists, insurance bureaucrats, CEO salaries and profits; offering  a choice of 
a public option; and – most important – assuring that everyone has  access 
to affordable health insurance.  
Democratic Members of Congress have to realize that the voters will only  
have the opportunity to get past the fog of misleading scare tactics and 
focus  on these real elements of reform – if the bill is actually passed.  
Republicans understand that  completely.  That’s why they will do  everything in 
their power to stop reform.  Democrats must do everything we can to assure 
success.  
Conventional Wisdom is ready and waiting to brand President Obama’s  
signature legislative goal as a failure.  And Republicans would like nothing 
better than to argue that the bright  hopes of November 2008 have been doused by 
a grassroots conservative counter  attack.  
In fact, of course, changing  America – and defeating the insurance  
industry – is very hard.  They don’t  surrender quietly.  They have not  shrunk 
from using monstrous levels of misrepresentation and fear to prevent  passage 
of health care reform.  
But when we actually pass  health insurance reform, there will be another, 
giant, less-discussed benefit  for Democrats and Progressives – a new 
narrative about overcoming enormous odds  – and winning.  If we raise health  care 
reform like a phoenix from the dead, we will reignite the entire  
progressive agenda and, just as important, the faith of the millions of  activists 
who propelled Barack Obama and Democrats into power a year and a half  ago. 
Faith that we can win – that change  is possible.  
The signature incantation of the Obama campaign was not born out of the  
heady successes of the Iowa caucuses.  It took hold on a rainy day in  South  
Carolina, when things looked pretty bleak and a  not-so-young African 
American woman interrupted a not-so-exciting rally with the  old civil rights call 
and response. “Fired Up!” she shouted. And the audience  responded: “Ready 
to Go!” And again: “Fired Up!”… “Ready to Go!”…and again.  Each time 
with more enthusiasm, and more  belief in the campaign’s slogan: “Yes We Can!” 
If we win health care reform, the Conventional Wisdom will collapse and  “
Yes We Can!” will once again be on the lips of millions of Americans.  But to 
make it so, in the last crucial,  decisive weeks of the battle for health 
care reform, all of us must once again  get “Fired Up and Ready to Go!” 
Robert Creamer is a long-time  political organizer and strategist, and 
author of the recent book:  Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can  Win, 
available on _Amazon.com._ 
(http://www.amazon.com/Listen-Your-Mother-Straight-Progressives/dp/0979585295/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1213241439&sr=8-1)

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "big campaign" group.

To post to this group, send to [email-masked]

To unsubscribe, send email to [email-masked]

E-mail [email-masked] with questions or concerns
 
This is a list of individuals. It is not affiliated with any group or organization.