Meet Some Slippery Weasels Who Run The Health Insurance Industry

Why do Americans have so much mistrust for their for-profit insurance companies-- almost as much, in fact, as they mistrust congressional Republicans? Yesterday, after a year long investigation, the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations held a hearing on rescissions of coverage after policyholders become ill. Bart Stupak (D-MI) questioned 3 insurance company CEOs whose companies were responsible for 20,000 individual insurance policyholders having had their policies rescinded in the past year. One of the slippery weasels-- at least one of them (WellPoint)-- has an internal policy in place that evaluates employee performance (i.e., suitability for bonuses and even retention) partially based on the amount of money the employees saved the company through retroactive rescissions of health insurance policies. In other words, those lovely bureaucrats who ill people have to deal with on the phone and who seem better equipped to have worked for Dick Cheney in Guantánamo, are incentivized to deny treatment. These are who have bought out members of the Senate like John McCain ($2,895,602), Ben Nelson ($1,196,799), Max Baucus ($1,184,113), Arlen Specter ($1,035,530), Joe Lieberman ($1,036,302), Mitch McConnell ($929,207), Chuck Grassley ($884,724), Kent Conrad ($824,837), Jim Bunning ($781,016), Orrin Hatch ($661,807) and other declared opponents of a single-payer health care system-- or even the compromise position of a public option! Oh, and Blanche Lincoln ($456,533), who is remarkable not because she's gotten millions over her career but because this year-- the health insurance industry's crunch year-- they've decided to focus in on her, a well known shill for any corporate entities willing to write big enough checks, and have given her the second largest amount in donations of any member of the Senate! They're counting on Blanche to cross over to the Republican side of the aisle and vote for the Insurance Industry agenda, not matter how badly it hurts Arkansas working families. Would she do that? You bet! She always does. And that's why Blue America is busy producing TV ads for saturate the Arkansas air waves with. I know I've mentioned it before, but could you consider chipping in on our Blue America Health Care page?

Of course, there are some people who think the health care system is working just fine-- or can just use a little tinkering around the edges like the GOP is proposing-- and then Blue America's accountability initiative is probably not for you. The chair of the committee, Henry Waxman, explained how the for-profit insurance system is a dysfunctional mess:

One of the biggest problems is that most states allow insurance companies to deny coverage for people with preexisting conditions. So if you lose your job, and you can’t qualify for a government program like Medicare or Medicaid, it’s nearly impossible to get health insurance if you are sick or have an illness.

This creates a perverse incentive. In the United States, insurance companies compete based on who is best at avoiding people who need life-saving health care. And this incentive manifests itself in a wide range of controversial practices by the insurance companies.

When people with individual policies fall ill and submit claims for expensive treatments, some insurance companies launch investigations. They scour the policyholder’s original insurance application and the person’s medical records to find any discrepancy, any omission, or any misstatement that could allow them to cancel the policy.

They try to find something-- anything-- so they can say that this individual was not truthful. It doesn’t have to relate at all to the medical care the person is seeking, and often it doesn’t. You might need chemotherapy for lymphoma, but the insurance company can cancel your coverage because you failed to disclose your gall stones.

It may come as a surprise to most people, but the insurance companies believe they are entitled to cancel policies even when these omissions or discrepancies are unintentional. They believe they have the right to cancel policies even when someone else, like the agent who sold their policy, was responsible for the discrepancy in the first place. In addition, they can terminate coverage not just for the primary policyholder, but for the entire family, including innocent children who did nothing wrong.

While sleazy political operators like Ben Nelson, Chuck Grassley, Mitch McConnell, Joe Lieberman, Arlen Specter, John Cornyn, Blanche Lincoln and Tom Daschle earn their keep by undermining health care reform-- many wonder about Obama's commitment to real health care reform (watch the video below)-- polling consistently shows that the American public wants it. One poll today shows that 83% of Americans want the public option, regardless of all what all the pompous, paid off shills in the House of Lords say to the contrary. Another poll shows that 76% favor it.

In today's Washington Post trusted health care expert Ezra Klein writes that health care reform is in danger and the photo? Insurance Industry shill Max Baucus on the phone, probably thanking some CEOs for the generous payments they've been lavishing his coffers with. He explains how Baucus' Finance Committee will destroy any chance of effective reform:

Put simply, the Finance Committee wanted its bill to cost $1 trillion over 10 years. The CBO returned an early estimate to the panel on Tuesday night: $1.6 trillion over 10 years. The specifics of the estimate have not been made public. But the final number changed everything. Max Baucus, the chairman of the committee, pushed markup back behind the July 4th recess. He has promised to get the bill below $1 trillion over 10 years.

That's very dangerous... Right now, I'm told Finance is going down the road of less reform. They're cutting the subsidies, cutting the generosity of the basic benefit package and cutting the number of people who will ultimately be insured by their proposal. This reflects a simple reality: If you're going to try to leave the central features of the health-care system untouched, you can't get to universal coverage, or even anywhere near it, on $100 billion a year.

Few members of the Senate are on the side of their constituents on this. A handful-- Bernie Sanders (D-VT), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Jack Reed (D-RI), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), the People's Tribunes-- are. If you care, your should contact your two and tell them you'll never vote for them again if single payer or the public option fails. The plan of the senators who have been bribed by Big Insurance and the Medical-Industrial Complex is to force us all to hand over more money to incompetent, greed-obsessed and crooked insurance companies who are slobbering over the billions they stand to make while they think of all the ways they can cut back on service.

One Senate candidate who gets it is Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner. She's very clear that health care reform must include a robust public option.

"Without health insurance coverage, the vast majority of Americans cannot afford to pay for health care. Even many with health care take shortcuts in getting health care for themselves and their families. Those without, go without needed services, or they go bankrupt or lose their homes because of medical bills they can’t pay,

"All Americans must have access to quality, cost-effective health care, and this should be the guiding principle of any federal legislation. In Ohio, many job losses have occurred from the collapse of the auto and related industries and from tax incentives to corporations who have outsourced manufacturing jobs to other countries whose governments cover health care expenses.  

“Many opponents of a public option blithely confuse the government’s direct payment for health care services with some countries’ governments that actually provide health care services. This is irresponsible. Millions of dollars have been spent to run TV ads that scare everyday Americans into thinking that health care reform is the equivalent of socialism. Nothing could be further from the truth.

“It is time for Democrats and Republicans alike to step up and give Americans real choices for health care for themselves and their families, and it needs to happen now. A public option has existed for years for older Americans through Medicare, which has successfully been providing decent health care to millions. Extending this type of model as a choice of coverage to the more than 46 million Americans without health coverage is not earth shattering-- it’s a choice and one we’ve been doing with success for years... We need to keep what works and expand that to those who now lack access to health care. A public option is simply one way to do that among many. It’s time that Americans be unshackled from the fear, ignorance and gridlock of past practices. Let Americans keep the health insurance they have if they like it, but let’s use the public option as a way to make health care available to all Americans while making it easier to account for how money on health care is spent."

This is why we liked Obama and why we elected him. What happened? (Please help us with our carrot and our stick approach-- whichever you prefer.)