With the writing on the wall concerning Health Care, suddenly Insurers are willing to talk.
WASHINGTON —The health insurance industry said Tuesday that it was willing to end the practice of charging higher premiums to sick people if Congress adopted a comprehensive plan that provided coverage to all Americans.
The industry’s flexible position on the issue came as a surprise to lawmakers, and could make it easier to reach an agreement in Congress because it narrows the issues on which insurers are ready to fight the Democrats who control Congress and the White House.
Insurers said they were still staunchly opposed to creation of a new government-run health insurance plan, which, under many Democratic proposals, would compete directly with private insurers.
Ah… they are staunchly opposed to a government-run plan because it would create competition. But, how could this be? We’ve been told for years about the horrors of government-run health care, so, it goes to reason, that only those losers with pre-existing conditions and people too dense to get a job with benefits will take advantage of a government health care program. Everyone else will stay with their private insurer. Right?
Wrong. This won’t happen, and health insurance companies know it. They know that they’ve been offering a crappy product at exorbitant prices. And for all the nightmarish stories thrown out concerning a government plan, the truth is that the health insurance industry has its own little shop of horrors. And it’s this truth that has them in a panic. It’s also funny to note how quickly they abandon their competitive, free market principles when faced with competition.
In effect, insurers said they were willing to discard an element of their longstanding business model, under which insurance policies are priced, in part, on the basis of a person’s medical condition or history.
In the past, insurers have warned that if they could not consider a person’s health in setting premiums, the rates charged to young, healthy people would soar, making coverage unaffordable.
But Karen M. Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, a major trade group, told lawmakers on Tuesday that insurers were exploring ideas to prevent such increases by spreading the risks and costs across a larger population of both healthy and unhealthy people.
Insurers said that they could accept more aggressive regulation of not just their premiums but also their benefits, underwriting practices and other activities. Such strict regulation, they said, would make a new public program unnecessary.
Yep, they are in a panic, and their goal is clear: Stop government health care. The truth is they can’t compete, and the only reason they’re still in existence is because they’ve all agreed to be as bad as the next guy. Seriously, if one buys into all the insurance companies’ propaganda then no one with private insurance would ever consider a government plan. Which would maintain the status quo – meaning that only those people currently uninsured would take advantage of government health care because they had no other option. The rest of us would stay with our awesome private insurance. Life goes on, same as before.
But that’s not what will happen, and insurance companies realize that they’re in trouble and quite possibly facing extinction. For far too long they have been gouging the American people, offering only two choices: Pay up or be uninsured (small print: even if you pay up don’t count on having your health bills paid). And, when it comes to greed, private health insurers give Wall Street a run for their money. It’s another example of a rigged system, one in which profits are built not by offering a sought after, superior product, but by denying care.
So spare me the dire warnings and horror stories about government-run health care. I don’t believe it can be any worse than what most of us are dealing with now. And that’s the problem. Private Health Insurance companies have very little to do with health… unless health refers to company profits.
UPDATE: Action Item – Stand With Dean. Sign the petition!
“Give America a choice. We support healthcare reform that allows individual Americans to choose either a universally available public healthcare option like Medicare or for-profit private insurance. A public option is the only way to guarantee healthcare for all Americans and its inclusion is non- negotiable.
Any legislation without the choice of a public option is only insurance reform and not the healthcare reform America needs.”