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Health Officials Move To Loosen State Requirements

Posted on July 13, 2011 by scjustice

By Noam N. Levey–July 12, 2011

Washington— The Obama administration moved Monday to ease some requirements on states to help them set up new insurance exchanges in 2014, a key feature of the healthcare law the president signed last year.The state-based exchanges are intended to make buying health insurance comparable to shopping the Internet for an airline ticket or a hotel room. And by 2019, the exchanges are expected to provide insurance for an estimated 24 million Americans who don’t get their health insurance from their employer, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Small employers with fewer than 100 workers also will be able to use the exchanges, which will have to offer plans with a minimum level of coverage. No plans will be able to deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.

Filed under: In the news, Health Care Law Implementation, In The Courts | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Health Insurers Paid Chamber $86.2 Million To Stop Reform

Posted on November 17, 2010 by scjustice
Karen Ignagni, CEO of AHIP, the insurers’ lobby through which money was funneled.
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Today Bloomberg broke an eye-popping story on the true extent to which health insurers went to quietly undermine reform while publicly assuring us of their cooperation. See here where former insurance industry insider Wendell Potter predicted as much, that Big Insurance would employ front groups, third parties and scare tactics in order to maintain the failing status quo and keep Wall Street happy – all at the expense of 32 million uninsured Americans.
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By Drew Armstrong – Nov 17, 2010

Health insurers last year gave the U.S. Chamber of Commerce $86.2 million that was used to oppose the health-care overhaul law, according to tax records and people familiar with the donation.

The insurance lobby, whose members include Minnetonka, Minnesota-based UnitedHealth Group Inc. and Philadelphia-based Cigna Corp., gave the money to the Chamber in 2009 as Democrats were increasing their criticism of the industry, according to one person who requested anonymity because laws don’t require identifying funding sources. The Chamber of Commerce received the money from the Washington-based America’s Health Insurance Plans when the industry was urging Congress to drop a plan to create a competing public insurance option.

The spending exceeded the insurer group’s entire budget from a year earlier and accounted for 40 percent of the Chamber’s $214.6 million in 2009 spending. The expenditures reflect the insurers’ attempts to influence the bill after Democrats in Congress and the White House put more focus on regulation of the insurance industry.

(more…)

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