Tell Your Health Care Insurer It’s Time for Real Reform

by Mike Hall, Sep 29, 2009

Health insurance companies have turned to scare tactics and outright lies to fight health care reform. Seems they’re not satisfied with jacking up the cost of premiums, canceling policies when people get sick and denying treatment.

In fact, you can tell the health insurance companies you’re sick of their lies and that it’s time for real health care reform.

• Click here if a Blue Cross Blue Shield company provides your health insurance.
• Click here if UnitedHealthcare provides your health insurance.
• Click here if Aetna provides your health insurance.
• Click here if Humana provides your health insurance.
• Click here if CIGNA provides your health insurance.
• Click here if a different company provides your health insurance.
• Click here if you don’t have health insurance.

Today, Florida members of the Alliance for Retired Americans rallied in front of the West Palm Beach offices of Humana and called the scare tactics and lies ”unconscionable.”

Humana and several other health insurance companies recently sent letters to seniors with Medicare Advantage policies, claiming that health care reform legislation would cause “millions of seniors and disabled individuals” to lose their benefits. Says Tony Fransetta, president of the Florida Alliance for Retired Americans:

What Humana is doing is unconscionable. Although payments to Humana under Medicare Advantage have increased drastically in the last several years, benefits and services for seniors have not.

On Sept. 21, Medicare told Humana and other health insurance companies to stop misleading consumers.

This information is misleading and confusing to beneficiaries. Please be advised that we take this matter very seriously and, based upon the findings of our investigation, will pursue compliance and enforcement action.

Humana is the second-largest provider of Medicare Advantage policies in the nation.

Medicare Advantage was designed as a pilot program to privatize Medicare during the Bush administration. It allows seniors to receive their benefits through private insurers who, in turn, are reimbursed by the federal government. But currently, the government pays private insurance companies like Humana, on average, 14 percent more for providing coverage to Medicare Advantage clients than it would pay for the same care under traditional Medicare.

That’s quite a cash cow for the health insurance industry and represents, according to the Alliance, “wasteful overpayments to Medicare Advantage programs” that health care reform would rein in.

As Barbara Kennelly, president the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, points out in a column at Huffington Post, the insurance industry uses the funding to tell a $169 billion lie about health care reform.

The only threats of benefits cuts have come from private insurers offering Medicare Advantage plans. Why? Because the industry is at risk of losing billions in federal subsidies—subsidies that have raised premiums for every beneficiary in Medicare (not just the 20 percent in private Medicare Advantage)….These subsidies continue to amass over time, ultimately costing the Treasury and every senior in Medicare $169 billion during the first decade alone. It’s a sweet deal for insurers. A deal they’re now fighting hard to protect.

Lying about Medicare is not the only sleazy action in which health insurance companies are engaging. There is the $1.4.million a day they are spending on an army of 2,700 congressional lobbyists and campaign contributions to kill real reform—especially a public health insurance option that would lower consumer costs and force health insurers to compete. That’s in addition to the television, radio, web and media campaigns to derail reform—and the big health insurance fingerprints on this summer’s town hall meetings.

Then there’s the way they do everyday business:

• Denying coverage or rising rates on people or businesses based on pre-existing conditions.
• Standing between patients and their doctors in deciding what care is needed.
• Paying bonuses and other incentives to employees who deny care or reject claims.

It’s enough to make you sick.

Our friends at Brave New Films have just posted their third short video in the “Sick for Profits” project on how the big insurance companies are fighting health care reform. This time, they’ve expose WellPoint, which operates the Blue Cross Blue Shield empire. Previously, they looked at UnitedHealthcare and CIGNA. Click here for those and other Sick for Profit videos.

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