Health Care Giants Spent $86 Million in Effort to Kill Reform
We reported that Big Insurance funneled millions of dollars to the Chamber of Commerce to fight health care reform and millions more to try and water down the law once it was passed. Now Bloomberg Business News reporter Drew Armstrong has put a price tag on the effort to kill the bill. In an article earlier this week, Armstrong says tax records show big health insurers last year gave the Chamber $86.2 million that was used to oppose the health care overhaul law.
The Chamber is not required to disclose its donors, but unnamed sources told Bloomberg that the money came from America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), an industry trade group that represents companies like Cigna and UnitedHealth Group. AHIP’s donation accounted for 40 percent of all the money the Chamber received in 2009.
Insurers Set to End Sick Kids’ Policies
 |
|
This Thursday, Sept. 23, several key components of the health care reform law go into effect, including a ban on denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions. But just this week, several large health insurers began an end-run around the law when they announced that rather than cover kids, they’ll get out of the business of selling children’s policies.
That action, says Ethan Rome, executive director of Health Care for America Now (HCAN), is “immoral…appalling…and dishonest.”
We’re just days away from a new era when insurance companies must stop denying coverage to kids just because they are sick, and now some of the biggest changed their minds and decided to refuse to sell child-only coverage. The latest announcement by the insurance companies that they won’t cover kids is immoral, and to blame their appalling behavior on the new law is patently dishonest.
Court Blocks Hikes Sought by Massachusetts Health Insurance Corps.
A Massachusetts court yesterday blocked premium increases—some as high as 40 percent—sought by six state health insurers. The action by the Suffolk Superior Court was the second time the insurance companies’ bid to boost rates was rejected. The state Division of Insurance rejected the rate hikes last month, calling them “excessive.”
The insurance companies then filed suit claiming the state has no authority to block the premium increases and sought an injunction to prevent the state from regulating premiums until the suit comes to trial. The judge rejected the request.
In an interview with the Boston Globe, Gov. Deval Patrick (D) praised the court’s decision.
Unless insurers can give us a good reason, when everything else is flat, that they deserve 20 percent, 30 percent and in some cases 40 percent increases, they’re going to be denied.
California Investigating 7 Health Insurers for Denying Claims, Hiking Rates
California has launched an investigation into possible illegal premium increases and denial of claims by the state’s seven largest health insurance companies.
Yesterday, state Attorney General Jerry Brown issued subpoenas for detailed financial records and other information records to Aetna Health, Anthem Blue Cross, CIGNA, Health Net, Blue Shield of California, Kaiser Permanente and PacifiCare.
Earlier this month Anthem Blue Cross announced it was raising premiums in California by as much as 39 percent for its 800,000 customers, despite a $4.7 billion 2009 profit by its parent firm WellPoint. The insurer is now facing a congressional hearing and Obama administration scrutiny over its rate hikes.
In September, California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC) released a report that which states that since 2002 the state’s largest health insurers rejected more than one in five medical claims. Data from the last half of 2009 shows the rejection rate has jumped to more than one in four (26 percent), with PacificCare leading the way, rejecting 41.7 percent of claims, according to the CNA/NNOC report.
HHS Report Slams Insurers Premium Hikes While Pocketing Record Profits
 |
|
Profits for the nation’s 10 largest health insurance companies increased 250 percent between 2000 and 2009—10 times faster than inflation—but that hasn’t stopped the private insurance industry from trying to reach even deeper into consumers’ pocketbooks with huge premium increases.
According to a new report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the nation’s five largest insurance companies took in combined profits of $12.2 billion last year, up 56 percent over 2008.
But companies such as Anthem Blue Cross of California, owned by WellPoint, which enjoyed a $4.7 billion profit in 2009, want more. Anthem announced this month it would raise premiums on 800,000 Californians by as much as 39 percent. Insurers in several other states are seeking similar hikes. Says HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius:
Over the last year, America’s largest insurance companies have requested premium increases of 56 percent in Michigan, 24 percent in Connecticut, 23 percent in Maine, 20 percent in Oregon, and 16 percent in Rhode Island, to name just a few states. Premium increases have left thousands of families that are already struggling during the economic downturn with an unpleasant choice between fewer benefits, higher premiums, or having no insurance at all. Hard-working families deserve better.
Record Profits Don’t Stop Health Insurer’s Record Rate Hikes
There’s a theory that trends happen first in California before spreading to the rest of the nation. If that’s true in health insurance, we’re all in deep trouble.
Last week, Anthem Blue Cross–whose parent company WellPoint posted a record $4.7 billion profit in 2009–announced it was gouging even more money from its 800,000 California customers by raising premiums as much as 39 percent.
Deborah Burger, RN, and co-president of the National Nurse United (NNU), says Anthem Blue Cross’s “disgraceful behavior may be particularly offensive,”
but it is not out of character for an industry engages systemically in price gouging and denial of care.
Big Insurance Funds Chamber of Commerce to Kill Health Care Reform
|
|
The nation’s biggest health insurers have been funneling money quietly to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to air lie-filled, scare-mongering commercials about health care reform.
Like Capt. Renault, who discovered there was gambling going on at Rick’s Café Américain in Casablanca, we are: “Shocked, shocked….” Yeah, right.
Most observers of the health care reform fight suspected the major insurers that make up the America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) were helping to foot the bill for the latest round of ads by two “business coalitions” subsidized by the Chamber. But it wasn’t until Peter Stone at the National Journal connected the dots that we had proof.
Dan Pfeiffer, White House communications director, says the report confirms
one of Washington’s worst-kept secrets—which is big insurance companies are fighting tooth and nail to kill health reform that will wrest power from their hands and give it to American families.
Maine Union Members Tell Snowe to Support a Public Option, and More Health Care News
 |
||||
|
||||
When Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) suggested she would block health care reform if it included a public option, Maine workers took action: The Maine AFL-CIO put its convention on hold so attendees could call her and tell her that a public option is essential to make reform work. (Recent polls in Maine suggest Mainers strongly support a public option.)
Here are some of the latest developments in the fight for real health care reform:
- Momentum is building for a public option in final bills being crafted in the U.S. Senate and the House. This is a critical time to contact your senators and representatives.
- Big companies like Wal-Mart are lobbying hard to exempt the coverage they provide from health care reform. That would leave tens of millions of workers stuck in the same high-cost, no-guarantee system we have today.
- 55 members of Congress who oppose giving America the choice of a public option are actually getting government-administered health care through Medicare.
Tell Your Health Care Insurer It’s Time for Real Reform
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.”
Health Care Reform Needs Public Option—Not Band-Aid
 |
|
Today, union and health care activists around the country are raising their voices against the private health insurance companies’ mutlimillion-dollar campaign to block health care reform. In dozens of rallies and demonstrations they are saying: “Big Insurance: We’re sick of it.”
Union members are joining a march on Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association’s Portland, Ore., headquarters. In a letter to Blue Cross President Scott Serota, Oregon AFL-CIO President Tom Chamberlain calls on the company to cease opposition to a public health insurance option and stop the use of union members’ premium payments to fund lobbying against a public option.
Union members in Oregon have spent too many years at the bargaining table knowing that they have to choose between bargaining for better wages, or maintaining their healthcare. This is unsustainable; healthcare reform with true cost controls is necessary. For union members to now see their healthcare dollars spent lobbying against the reform they support is absolutely unacceptable.
