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Must Read Inside Dope On Big Insurance’s Lobbying Efforts

Posted on November 1, 2011 by scjustice

From The Huffington Post:

By Wendell Potter

10/31/11 08:53 AM ET

If you have no idea what you’re paying good money for when you enroll in a health insurance plan, there’s a good reason for that: insurers profit from your ignorance. And they’re waging an intense behind-the-scenes campaign to keep you in the dark.

In my first appearance before Congress after leaving the insurance industry, I told members of the Senate Commerce Committee that insurers intentionally make it all but impossible for consumers to find out in advance of buying a policy exactly what is covered and what isn’t and how much they’ll be on the hook for if they get sick or injured. Insurers are quite willing to provide you with slick marketing materials about their policies, but those materials are notoriously skimpy when it comes to useful information. And the documents they provide after you enroll are so dense few of us can understand them. (more…)

Filed under: Affordable Care Act | Tagged: Aetna, AHIP, America's Health Insurance Plans, Big Insurance, CIGNA, Consumer Reports, Consumers Union, healthcare insurance, Humana, industry lobbyists, National Association of Health Underwriters, SBC, Stephen J. Hemsley, Summary of Benefits and Coverage, transparency, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, UnitedHealth, WellPoint, Wendell Potter, White House | Leave a Comment »

Repeal Benefits Blue Cross Blue Shield

Posted on July 5, 2011 by scjustice

From The Post and Courier:

By Renee Dudley–Sunday, July 3, 2011

In 2006, the South Carolina Legislature repealed a decades-old insurance code, stripping the state’s authority to regulate discounting in contracts between hospitals and insurers.

The deletion allowed the state’s biggest health insurance company, Blue Cross Blue Shield, to negotiate contracts that could cripple its competitors and raise costs for consumers. And Blue Cross was among the special-interest groups lobbying for the repeal, according to a legislator who requested it.

Although the state apparently had not enforced that section of the law, the repeal stripped regulators of authority to step in if it became necessary to regulate anticompetitive activities.

The code appears to have forbidden types of “most-favored-nation” contracts with hospitals and doctors, which some economists said have played a significant role in driving up health care costs in South Carolina. (more…)

Filed under: Health Care Law Implementation, In The Courts, In the news | Tagged: Aetna, American Medical Association, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Carolina Care Plan, CIGNA, David Balto, David Cluchey, David Thomas, Department of Insurance, Donald Pifer, Federal Trade Commission, Frank Knapp, Gerald Malloy, Massachusetts, Medical University of South Carolina, Michigan, Ray Greenberg, Rhode Island, Rhode Island Medical Society, Roper St. Francis Healthcare, S.C. Medical Association, S.C. Senate Banking and Finance Committee, S.C. Small Business Chamber of Commerce, S.C. Supreme Court, Shane Massey, South Carolina Legislature, Steve DeToy, Todd Atwater, U.S. Department of Justice, UnitedHealthcare, University of Maine School of Law, William Mahon | Leave a Comment »

Guess Who Loves The Individual Mandate, Big Profits?

Posted on November 19, 2010 by scjustice

It’s a political pickle, all right. The same health insurance goliaths that secretly bankrolled anti-Obama campaigns in the midterm elections, while publicly proclaiming cooperation with the White House, now have to persuade their politicians to lay off the individual mandate, no matter what their Tea Party supporters say.

From Bloomberg Businessweek:

By Drew Armstrong

When the White House and Democratic lawmakers wrote the health-care overhaul bill, they concocted a sweet coating for the bitter medicine the health industry would have to swallow. In exchange for tighter regulation and numerous new directives, insurers, drugmakers, hospitals, and physicians got some 30 million new paying customers under the individual mandate requiring almost everyone to buy insurance starting in 2014 or pay a fine.

The individual mandate is now under attack in the courts and on Capitol Hill by Republicans, libertarians, and Tea Party enthusiasts who call it an affront to personal liberty. The industry, however, views it as the bedrock supporting the entire health reform law and is lobbying to keep it. The prospect of a vastly bigger market has helped spark a 7.4 percent rise since Jan. 1 in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Managed Health Care Index of publicly traded health-care companies.

For insurers, eliminating millions of potential customers while keeping other aspects of the overhaul would be a “nuclear nightmare,” says Robert Laszewski, president of Health Policy and Strategy Associates, a consulting firm that works with insurers. It would leave insurers without the extra revenue to cover higher costs from the law’s ban on the denial of coverage to people with pre-existing conditions or charging sicker patients higher premiums. “It’s the No. 1 lobby issue in the insurance industry right now,” says Laszewski.

(more…)

Filed under: Understanding The New Law | Tagged: Affordable Care Act, American Enterprise Institute, Barack Obama, CIGNA, Congressional Budget Office, David M. Cordani, Democrats, Doug Badger, drugmakers, Health Care Reform, Health Policy and Strategy Associates, individual mandate, John Boehner, Nickles Group, Republicans, Robert Laszewski, Tea Party, Thomas P. Miller | Leave a Comment »

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Must Read Inside Dope On Big Insurance’s Lobbying Efforts

From The Huffington Post:

By Wendell Potter

10/31/11 08:53 AM ET

Repeal Benefits Blue Cross Blue Shield

By Renee Dudley–Sunday, July 3, 2011

Guess Who Loves The Individual Mandate, Big Profits?

From Bloomberg Businessweek:

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