U.S. Health Care System Wasting Billions, and Other Health Care News
A new report today from Thomson Reuters shows how badly the nation’s health care system is failing working families. The report estimates that more than $500 billion, and maybe as much as $800 billion, is being wasted every year. Health costs in the United States are so high because standard practices are so wasteful. If we can recover savings from that waste, it would far exceed the cost of health care legislation being considered in Congress—legislation that can provide more people with affordable, quality coverage.
Some “highlights” from this unsettling report:
- The average hospital is spending a quarter of its budget on billing and paperwork.
- Tens of billions of dollars a year are wasted because of outdated, paper-based records systems that discourage information sharing.
- Conditions like uncontrolled diabetes that should be avoided through smart preventative care cost tens of billions a year.
- Medical mistakes and unnecessary care cost hundreds of billions a year.
Hundreds Protest as Health Insurance Lobby Plots to Kill Reform
More than 500 union members and health care activists in Washington, D.C., this afternoon packed the sidewalks in front of and across the street from the meeting of the giant health insurance lobby group, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), in support of health care reform.
AHIP, whose top honchos, including its head, Karen Ignagni, are meeting at the Capital Hilton to plot their assault against health care reform, refused to meet with any of the seven families who traveled here to tell how they were denied needed health care despite having insurance coverage.
Before marching to the Hilton, hundreds gathered at the AFL-CIO building, where AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka laid out the principles that must underlie any health care reform: a real public option to decrease costs for families and create competition, employer responsibility so companies like Wal-Mart are held accountable and no new taxes on workers’ benefits.
As Trumka said:
Health care reform isn’t to make insurance companies happy, it’s to make the American people healthy! Today we are going to make sure that they hear loud and clear what this fight is about. It’s about the families who will be with us at the Capital Hilton—the families who’ve suffered so much—not about the big insurance companies’ bottom line.
Join Us Thursday to Rally Against Insurance Company Abuses
 |
|
This Thursday, representatives from America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) are meeting in Washington, D.C., to plan the next assaults against health care reform. And workers will be turning out to challenge them and demand real health care reform.
If you’ll be in the Washington, D.C., area, come join us to demand accountability for insurance companies. We’ll meet at the AFL-CIO headquarters, 815 16th St., N.W., at 2:30 p.m. and march to the Capital Hilton, where AHIP will be meeting. You can RSVP to attend here on Facebook.
Big insurers and their allies are spending tens of millions of dollars to maintain their profits over our ability to access health care. We’re closer than ever to achieving real health insurance reform that provides everyone access to affordable and quality care, and the big insurance companies are battling viciously to prevent that. They’re using misleading studies, scare tactics and more than $1 million a day in lobbying.
$1 million a day in lobbying.
Let them know they’re not going to win this time.
If you can’t make it on Thursday, you still can follow the rally here at the blog and on Twitter.
Insurance Industry Report: So Twisted Even Its Author Disowns It
 |
|
Turns out the “report” on health care reform, released by America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), is being denounced by the very company that prepared it.
PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) admits that at the request of AHIP, it cooked up the scariest scenario possible about the cost of health care reform and ignored factors that show health care reform could actually save money.
According to the Politico’s Live Pulse column, PwC released a statement
basically saying, “Hey, we weren’t paid to evaluate the effects of the entire bill, but rather a small slice of it.” The statement only seems to reinforce critics’ view that the report is skewed precisely because it doesn’t take into account the totality of reform.
The last, and key, line from the statement: “If other provisions in health care reform are successful in lowering costs over the long term, those improvements would offset some of the impacts we have estimated.”
In other words, PwC is saying if reform’s cost containment measures work, their estimate could be wrong.
Lies, Damned Lies and a Health Insurance Industry Report Condemning Reform
With the prospect of Congress passing health care reform legislation becoming more likely each day, the nation’s health insurance industry has launched a new scare campaign to torpedo reform. Ironically, in doing so, Big Health Insurers also have shown why a public health insurance plan option is vital to real health care reform.
The insurance industry trade lobby, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) just released a report that claims the Senate Finance Committee’s version of health care reform legislation would raise average family premiums to $21,300. The report makes clear that the insurance industry will not lower health care costs on its own. Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC), called the report
an outrageous threat by one of the richest industries in America….Our legislators should respond to this bullying and stop coddling a useless industry whose sole function is to make enormous profits from the pain and suffering of patients while providing little in return.
Big-Money Corporate Consultants Fight to Kill Employee Free Choice, Health Care
Behind the wide and well-funded disinformation campaign against pro-worker policies like the Employee Free Choice Act is a network of corporate funders and high-priced lobbying firms, aimed at distracting and confusing the public and the press on key issues. At the Center for American Progress’ Wonk Room blog, Pat Garofalo takes a close look at one such consulting firm, DDC, that is whipping up opposition to health insurance reform and the freedom to form unions.
DDC is being paid by America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), an insurance industry lobbying group, to oppose a public option in health care. It’s also running an anti-Employee Free Choice Act website funded by Koch Industries, an oil company whose ample dollars flow to lobbying, political contributions and a broad array of right-wing organizations with innocuous-sounding names like “Americans for Prosperity” (AFP).
House Unveils Health Care Bill with Public Option, No Benefits Tax; Vote Sought by Recess
Comprehensive health care reform took a significant step forward this afternoon when House leaders unveiled the final draft of a bill that contains a public health insurance plan option and shared responsibility, including an employer “pay or play” requirement—while not taxing the health care benefits working families receive through their job. A vote could come by the end of July.
The bill closely follows the health care blueprint developed by the House Education and Labor, Energy and Commerce and Ways and Means committees and includes cost containment and insurance market reforms to help stop private insurance industry abuses. For a closer look at the House bill, click here.
Says House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) about the bill:
Over the coming weeks, Congress will continue working with President Obama to make health care reform work for middle-class families in America….We have a path to success: lowering costs for consumers and businesses; giving greater choice to Americans, including keeping your current doctor or plan if you like them; improving the quality of your care; putting doctors, not insurance companies, back in charge.
Insurers Fight Health Care Reform with Dirty Tricks, But Public Supports Obama Plan
 |
| Click here to order this button from The Union Shop Online™. |
More proof out this week that the insurance industry’s sweet words for health care reform are dripping with hypocrisy. America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), which has been pushing a sham health care reform campaign masquerading as a grassroots initiative, now seems to be using dirty tricks and outright falsehoods in an attempt to keep some of their most profitable programs.
Jason Rosenbaum writes on Health Care For America Now! how Ken Johnson of the (New Bedford, Mass.) Eagle-Tribune noticed that AHIP was sending letters to newspapers in Massachusetts under the names of real seniors—who are unaware their names are being used—demanding that their representatives in Congress protect the Medicare Advantage health care program.
Health Insurance Industry Gets the Profits, Patients Get the Shaft
 |
|
A wide range of approaches and proposals mark the debate on health care reform. The insurance industry group, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), has a pretty “simple plan” says Ethan Rome, deputy campaign manager for Health Care for America Now! (HCAN).
They get the profits and we get the shaft.
Rome and some 100 union, health care and community activists, including members of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC) and Working America, rallied outside AHIP’s National Policy Forum at Washington, D.C.’s Ritz-Carlton hotel this morning.
Calling for “real reform and not rhetoric,” the group denounced AHIP’s “astroturf” health care reform campaign orchestrated by private, for-profit health insurance executives that is masquerading as a grassroots initiative.
