Obama Seeks to Vilify Health Insurers, Give Them $336 Billion Check
March 10, 2010
ABC News
ABC’s Z. Byron Wolf reports: President Obama and Democrats launched a campaign to vilify insurance companies in the final stretch of their health reform effort.
Republicans, meanwhile, pointed out that those very same insurance companies would get huge checks from the government if health reform is enacted.
“(Health Insurers) will keep on doing this for as long as they can get away with it. This is no secret,” the president said. “They’re telling their investors this – ‘We are in the money. We are going to keep on making big profits even though a lot of folks are going to be put under hardship,’” the President told supporters at a stop in Pennsylvania today.
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, meanwhile, wrote to insurance company executives demanding that they justify premium hikes.
Neither mentioned that the Senate health reform bill, which is the basis for Democrats’ last best chance at comprehensive reform, would give the insurance companies millions of new customers required by law to buy health insurance. It would also require insurers to cover everyone, regardless of age, gender or pre-existing condition.
To help pay for the new insurance requirements the government would give to people money to buy insurance – $336 billion over the next ten years. That money, ultimately, would have to go to… drum roll… insurance companies.
People without employer-sponsored insurance who make too much money to qualify for Medicaid and less than about $88,000 for a family of four, would get tax credits to help them buy insurance on the open market. But the payment of the tax credits would be made, point out Republican researchers, directly to insurance companies. See page 37 here of the Senate Finance Committee’s exhaustive explanation of the plan:
During the 2008 Presidential campaign, then-Senator Obama criticized a proposal by Sen. John McCain because it would send government help for people to buy insurance directly to insurance companies.
“But The New Tax Credit [For Health Insurance] He’s Proposing? That Wouldn’t Go To You. It Would Go Directly To Your Insurance Company – Not Your Bank Account,” said Obama in October on the Campaign trail.
And yet that’s exactly what Democrats’ proposal would do and why so many would prefer public insurance option to compete with the private market. Supporting the Senate bill will be tough for many liberal Democrats in the House.
To the Republicans’ (and Obama’s on the campaign trail) point about the payments going directly to insurance companies, remember that people with employer-sponsored insurance or current federal medical benefits do not usually get a separate check to buy insurance either. They pay premiums directly to the insurance company and so does their employer. The Senate proposal would create a similar relationship between people who don’t have employer-based insurance and the government.
So why do Insurance companies, if they’re set to receive more than $330 billion in government subsidies to insure people without insurance now oppose the Senate bill?
“Health plans proposed more than a year ago robust insurance market reforms and new consumer protections to guarantee coverage for pre-existing conditions. Much more needs to be done in the current legislation to address the skyrocketing cost of medical care, which is making health care coverage unaffordable for working families and small businesses,” said Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman from America’s Health Insurance Plans, in a statement today.
He argued that health insurers should not be targeted by the President and their profits are lower by margin than other sectors in the health industry.
“For every dollar spent on health care in America, less than one penny goes towards health plan profits. The focus needs to be on the other 99 cents,” he said.
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With Record Profits, Insurers Hiking Rates
March 10, 2010
CBS News
By Sharyl Attkisson
As the battle over health care reform resumes this week, Democrats remain split over whether a bill will pass before the end of the month. But the White House is now ramping up its case that time is money and Americans who need insurance are the ones getting stuck with the bill as CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports.
As Obama administration officials push the president’s health care plan, exhibit A is a stunning series of rate hikes by private insurance companies.
“15,000 people a day lose their insurance, and some of those folks are being actually priced out of the marketplace,” said Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
In fact, major insurers are seeking premium hikes for individual policies – people not covered through work: 56 percent in Michigan, more than 25 percent in California, and 20 percent or more in Oregon, Maine, and Connecticut. And double digit increases are completed or pending in at least eight other states.
That’s why the president has often co-opted the maddening rate hikes to make the case for health care reform, mentioning them in this weekend’s address and in a Super Bowl interview with Katie Couric when he noted that “one of the major insurers in California just announced in the individual market they are increasing their premiums by 39 percent.”
That company is Anthem Blue Cross, and Ilene Lisak is one of the unlucky customers. The company notified her by letter that her $525 a month premium is going up to $708, an almost 35 percent hike.
“I was so overwhelmed. I just started crying,” Lisak said.
Other customers recently told their stories to congress.
“This is outrageous. My benefits have not improved in any way, and I don’t go to the doctor that often,” said Jeremy Arnold
With so much controversy, Anthem has been forced to put off rate hikes until May 1, while state officials review them. Anthem’s parent company, Wellpoint, made $380 million profit in just the fourth quarter last year. But executives argue they have no choice but to raise rates.
“Hospital costs are going up over 11 percent. Pharmaceutical costs are going up over 13 percent,” said Wellpoint executive vice president Brad Fluegel. “That’s what we really need to be focused on.”
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Poll Shows There Is Less Respect For America Today
March 10, 2010 by JP
Filed under Government
March 10, 2010
Washington Times
By Joseph Curl
A majority of Americans say the United States is less respected in the world than it was two years ago and think President Obama and other Democrats fall short of Republicans on the issue of national security, a new poll finds.
The Democracy Corps-Third Way survey released Monday finds that by a 10-point margin — 51 percent to 41 percent — Americans think the standing of the U.S. dropped during the first 13 months of Mr. Obama’s presidency.
“This is surprising, given the global acclaim and Nobel peace prize that flowed to the new president after he took office,” said pollsters for the liberal-leaning organizations.
On the national security front, a massive gap has emerged, with 50 percent of likely voters saying Republicans would likely do a better job than Democrats, a 14-point swing since May. Thirty-three percent favored Democrats.
“The erosion since May is especially strong among women, and among independents, who now favor Republicans on this question by a 56 to 20 percent margin,” the pollsters said in their findings.
A May 2009 survey by the pollsters found the public saw the Democratic and Republican parties as equally able to handle national security (41 percent trusted Democrats more, and 43 percent trusted Republicans more.) On conducting the war on terrorism, the two parties were tied at 41 percent.
The Democrats’ gap on national security has widened on several other fronts:
• “Keeping America safe”: Democrats now trail by 13 points (34 percent to 47 percent.) The gap was just 5 points in July 2008.
• “Ensuring a strong military”: Democrats trail by 31 points (27 percent to 58 percent.)
• “Making America safer from nuclear threats”: Democrats trail by 11 points (34 percent to 45 percent,) “despite the president’s strong actions and speeches on steps to reduce nuclear dangers,” the pollsters said.
The poll, conducted late last month, found “the administration’s response to the Christmas Day terrorist attempt has contributed to the erosion.”
“While public polling showed that initial approval of Obama’s response was above 50 percent, two months of Republican criticism have taken a toll. Now a narrow 46 to 42 percent plurality of likely voters say they feel less confident about the administration’s handling of national security because of how it responded to the incident,” the pollsters said.
In addition, the detention of terrorist suspects and the Obama proposal to prosecute suspects in civil trials in New York City, which was later abandoned, also have taken a toll on the president’s approval ratings.
“Whereas a majority of the public approves of the job President Obama is doing in most aspects of national security, a 51 to 44 percent majority of likely voters disapproves of his efforts on the prosecution and interrogation of terrorism suspects,” the pollsters found.
Democracy Corps calls itself an independent, non-profit organization dedicated to making the government of the United States more responsive to the American people.” It was founded in 1999 by former Clinton adviser James Carville and Stanley Greenberg, a leading Democratic pollster.
Third Way calls itself “the leading moderate think-tank of the progressive movement.”
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Obama Launches Last Push on Health-Care Overhaul
March 4, 2010 by Brandy
Filed under Government
March 3, 2010
The Wall Street Journal
By Laura Meckler and Janet Adamy
President Barack Obama opened the final act of a year-long drama over health-care legislation Wednesday, calling on Democrats in Congress to approve the sweeping bill despite political risks and Republican opposition.
The president vowed to rally Americans and wavering lawmakers alike. White House aides said a pair of trips next week will be followed by a stream of public and private lobbying. The White House wants final votes by month’s end.
“At stake right now is not just our ability to solve this problem, but our ability to solve any problem,” Mr. Obama told a crowd of white-coated doctors and nurses in the East Room, where a year ago he started the drive for the legislation.
With polls showing that the legislation is unpopular and congressional Democrats bracing for big losses in this fall’s elections, the president urged them to ignore the politics. “I do not know how this plays politically, but I know it’s right,” he said. “Let’s get it done.”
Democrats and the White House are balancing high risks and rewards. Passing the health overhaul would fulfill a decades-old Democratic dream, bringing insurance to some 30 million Americans, and represent the greatest expansion of coverage since Medicare was created in 1965. But if the public judges the overhaul harshly, it is likely to cost some Democrats their seats, and the party’s majority in the House could be at risk.
The White House argues that, despite the negative poll numbers, Americans will like the measure if it becomes law, since the focus then could shift from the legislative process to the measure’s impact. Polling does find stronger support for the bill’s individual provisions than for the package as a whole.
Mr. Obama Wednesday also highlighted a handful of Republican ideas used in the legislation. Republicans dismissed the gesture as insufficient.
“You can’t add a couple of Republican sprinkles on the top of a 2,700-page bill and claim that it’s bipartisan,” said House Minority Leader John Boehner (R., Ohio).
Rejecting Republican calls to start again, the president said that given the “honest and substantial differences between the parties,” there was no point. “Everything there is to say about health care has been said,” he said to laughter, “and just about everybody has said it.”
For the first time, the president explicitly called on Congress to use a procedural technique that will let the Senate give its final approval with a simple majority vote. He didn’t use the word for that technique—”reconciliation”—but characterized the process as a way of calling a simple “up or down vote” that has been used for big bills before.
Republicans say the reconciliation process was never intended for such major legislation. “History is clear: Big legislation always requires big majorities,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said on the floor Wednesday.
Democrats need to approve the changes in the Senate through reconciliation because they no longer have 60 Senate votes necessary to end a standard debate, due to the loss last month of the Massachusetts seat long held by the late Edward Kennedy. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs downplayed the significance of the reconciliation measure, calling it a set of “technical corrections” to the original Senate measure. The reconciliation version contains some significant differences from the Senate bill, including taxes on the wealthy and lower levies on high-value health-insurance plans.
Under the Democratic plan, the process would work like this: First, the House would vote on the bill that the Senate approved in late December. House leaders hope to pass both that Senate bill, and then the reconciliation package, by March 17. After that, the Senate would need to pass the reconciliation bill. By month’s end, Democrats hope, the measure would go to the president to be signed into law.
Abuse of Power by The Government
March 3, 2010 by Brandy
Filed under Government
March 3, 2010
The Wall Street Journal
A string of electoral defeats and the great unpopularity of ObamaCare can’t stop Democrats from their self-appointed rendezvous with liberal destiny—ramming a bill through Congress on a narrow partisan vote. What we are about to witness is an extraordinary abuse of traditional Senate rules to pass a bill merely because they think it’s good for the rest of us, and because they fear their chance to build a European welfare state may never come again.
The vehicle is “reconciliation,” a parliamentary process that fast-tracks budget measures and was created in 1974 as a deficit-reduction tool. Limited to 20 hours of debate, reconciliation bills need a mere 50 votes in the Senate, with the Vice President as tie-breaker, thus circumventing the filibuster. Both Democrats and Republicans have frequently used reconciliation on budget bills, so Democrats are now claiming that using it to pass ObamaCare is no big deal.
Yet this shortcut has never been used for anything approaching the enormity of a national health-care entitlement. Democrats are only resorting to it now because their plan is in so much political trouble—within their own party, and even more among the general public—and because they’ve failed to make their case through persuasion.
“They know that this will take courage,” Nancy Pelosi said in an interview over the weekend, speaking of the Members she’ll try to strong-arm. “It took courage to pass Social Security. It took courage to pass Medicare,” the Speaker continued. “But the American people need it, why are we here? We’re not here just to self-perpetuate our service in Congress.”
Leave aside the irony of invoking “the American people” on behalf of a bill that consistently has been 10 to 15 points underwater in every poll since the fall, and is getting more unpopular by the day, particularly among independents. As Maine Republican Olympia Snowe pointed out in a speech last December, Social Security passed when Democrats controlled both Congress and the White House, yet 64% of Senate Republicans and 79% of the House GOP voted for it. More than half of the Senate Republican caucus voted for Medicare in 1965. Historically, major social legislation has always been bipartisan, because it reflects a durable political consensus.
Reconciliation is the last mathematical gasp for ObamaCare because Democrats can’t sell their policy to Senator Snowe, any other Republican, or even dozens of Democrats. This raw exercise of political power is of a piece with the copious corruption and bribery—such as the Cornhusker kickbacks and special tax benefits for union members—that liberals had to use to get even this far.
Democrats often point to welfare reform in 1996 as a reconciliation precedent, yet that bill passed the Senate with 78 votes, including Joe Biden and half of the Democratic caucus. The children’s health insurance program in 1997 was steered through Congress with reconciliation, but it, too, was built on strong (if misguided) bipartisan support. The Balanced Budget Act of 1997 that created Schip passed 85-15, including 43 Republicans. Even President Bush’s 2001 tax cuts, another case in reconciliation point, were endorsed by 12 Senate Democrats.
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Obama Attempts To Save His Health Bill
February 26, 2010 by JP
Filed under Government
February 26, 2010
Yahoo News
By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar
Cue the cameras. President Barack Obama and his Republican arch foes will argue their case on health care overhaul at a bipartisan summit expected to stretch out for a solid six hours on live, daytime television Thursday for millions of Americans.
Expect them to collide, not come together. Without a no-nonsense referee to slam the gavel on mind-fogging jargon, not to mention apocalyptic rhetoric, some viewers might wish Judge Judy was presiding.
Obama is hoping to resurrect his signature issue and restore his reputation as a different kind of politician who can deliver real results. Congressional leaders of both parties are worried about self-preservation and political control in the November elections.
The goal for Obama is to draw a glaring contrast between the big bill he’s backing and the limited steps Republicans are willing to take, hoping he can fire up anxious Democrats for what may be their last chance in a generation to provide health insurance coverage to nearly all Americans. They have the votes, but do they have the will?
Sen. Chris Dodd, D.-Conn., who will be among the lawmakers participating, worked a rally of supporters on the eve of Thursday’s meeting, scheduled to start at 10 a.m. EST.
“After that meeting, you can either join us or get out of the way,” Dodd said.
Not if Republicans have anything to do with it. Riding a populist backlash against the widening reach of government, they insist that Obama start from scratch, a notion the White House rejects. They’re unified in opposing the Democratic bills passed last year and have pulled back from more ambitious GOP-backed plans that might have provided a foundation for compromise.
With premiums going up by double digits for some consumers, polls show the public wants Congress and the president to deal with spiraling medical costs, shrinking coverage and questionable quality. But Americans are split over the Democratic bills. If Obama and the Democrats can’t get their legislation passed, there may still be a chance for a modest measure this year that smooths the rough edges of the current system but stops well short of coverage for all.
Obama will be the moderator in chief for talks on four topics: revamping insurance, cost containment, expanding coverage and the impact of health care legislation on deficit reduction. The summit will take place at Blair House, the presidential guest quarters across the street from the White House. Here’s a viewer’s guide for consumers on issues critical to working families, seniors and businesses:
• WORKING FAMILIES
While the cost of health insurance is a worry for most Americans, it’s a crisis for the nearly 50 million uninsured and about 27 million who buy their own coverage directly from an insurer. The $1-trillion, 10-year plan Obama and the Democrats have drafted focuses mainly on these two groups.
People with coverage from large employers would get some benefits, like being able to keep children in their late 20s on the company plan — but wouldn’t face major changes unless they lose their jobs or strike out on their own.
People who buy insurance directly, as well as small employers, would be able pick a plan in a new kind of competitive marketplace offering choices similar to what federal employees and Congress members get. But it wouldn’t be a free ride.
Most Americans would be required to carry health insurance and prove it to the IRS.
Obama and the Democrats say their plan would make coverage affordable by providing federal subsidies to help more than 30 million now uninsured. But solid middle-class families may still have to stretch to pay premiums. The help is a lot better for people on the lower income rungs.
Under the plan Obama released Monday — his opening bid at the summit — a family of four making $66,000 would have to pay $6,257 in premiums, close to 10 percent of its income. That’s even after receiving $3,000 in federal tax credits.
By comparison, a similar family making only $44,000 would pay $2,763 — about 6 percent of its income. The estimates come from the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.
“There’s no question that it’s better than the status quo,” said Larry Levitt, an analyst with Kaiser.
Most Republicans are opposed to an insurance mandate, although they generally like the idea of allowing 20-year-olds to remain on parental coverage. They want to concentrate on stimulating the private market to provide affordable alternatives. One idea: allowing consumers in high-cost states to buy coverage from insurers in low-cost areas.
Republicans also want to help people denied coverage because of medical problems by pumping federal money to high-risk insurance pools run by the states. Obama sees that only as a temporary measure; his plan would ban pre-existing condition denials starting in 2014.
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British Hospital Causes ‘Unimaginable Suffering’ To Patients
February 26, 2010
Times Online
By David Rose
Patients were routinely neglected or left “sobbing and humiliated” by staff at an NHS trust where at least 400 deaths have been linked to appalling care.
An independent inquiry found that managers at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust stopped providing safe care because they were preoccupied with government targets and cutting costs.
The inquiry report, published yesterday by Robert Francis, QC, included proposals for tough new regulations that could lead to managers at failing NHS trusts being struck off.
Staff shortages at Stafford Hospital meant that patients went unwashed for weeks, were left without food or drink and were even unable to get to the lavatory. Some lay in soiled sheets that relatives had to take home to wash, others developed infections or had falls, occasionally fatal. Many staff did their best but the attitude of some nurses “left a lot to be desired”.
The report, which follows reviews by the Care Quality Commission and the Department of Health, said that “unimaginable” suffering had been caused. Regulators said last year that between 400 and 1,200 more patients than expected may have died at the hospital from 2005 to 2008.
Andy Burnham, the Health Secretary, said there could be “no excuses” for the failures and added that the board that presided over the scandal had been replaced. An undisclosed number of doctors and at least one nurse are being investigated by the General Medical Council and Nursing and Midwifery Council.
Mr. Burnham said it was a “longstanding anomaly” that the NHS did not have a robust way of regulating managers or banning them from working, as it does with doctors or nurses. “We must end the situation where a senior NHS manager who has failed in one job can simply move to another elsewhere,” he added. “This is not acceptable to the public and not conducive to promoting accountability and high professional standards.”
A system of professional accreditation for senior managers would be considered and the Mid Staffordshire trust might lose its foundation status.
Some NHS chief executives have received six-figure redundancy packages or moved to other trusts despite poor performance. Martin Yeates, the former chief executive at Mid Staffordshire, received pay rises that took his annual salary to £180,000, while standards at the trust deteriorated.
The Liberal Democrats claimed that he had also received a payoff of more than £400,000 after stepping down last March, though Mr Burnham said he had received “no more than his contractual entitlement”.
The Care Quality Commission, the NHS regulator, said that the trust under its new management was now “safe to provide services”. But it still had concerns about staffing, patient welfare, the availability and suitability of equipment at the trust, and how it monitored and dealt with complaints. The inquiry made 18 recommendations for the trust and the wider health service, which the Government accepted in full. They include a new review of how regulators and regional health authorities monitor NHS hospitals and a report on “early-warning systems” to identify failing trusts.
But the families of those who died or suffered poor care branded the inquiry a “whitewash” and repeated calls for a full public investigation. The Conservatives accused ministers of trying to blame managers rather than taking responsibility for problems with national targets.
Julie Bailey, who founded the victims’ campaign group Cure the NHS after her mother died at Stafford Hospital, said that the handling of the scandal was disgraceful and unacceptable.
“It is time that the public were told the truth about the very large number of excess deaths in NHS care and the very large number of avoidable but deadly errors that occur every day.”
The NHS Confederation, which represents health trusts, said: “The responsibility for the way this hospital was run rests with its board, management and staff but, as the report says, the framework of targets, regulatory systems and policy priorities it worked within are also very important.”
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Top Lobbyist for Pharmaceutical Industry Resigns
February 12th, 2010
Reuters
Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) President and CEO Billy Tauzin said late Thursday he was resigning effective June 30 after five years as head of one of the most powerful lobby groups in Washington.
The group, which represents Pfizer, Merck and other top drugmakers, has been one of the biggest backers of Democrats’ legislation to expand access to health insurance, among other reforms.
“The bottom line is: this is not good for the (healthcare) bill,” said lobbying expert James Thurber, head of the Center for Congressional and Presidential studies at American University. “PhRMA played a key role and without Billy Tauzin, who is trusted by both parties, there … it doesn’t help the cause for getting the reform through.”
PhRMA pledged to pay $80 billion over 10 years in price cuts and other concessions as part of a deal with the Obama administration and top Senate Democrats last June. The cost was seen as a small price for the $315 billion drug industry to pay in exchange for potentially 30 million more insured customers.
In a statement, Tauzin said he had committed to serve PhRMA for more than five years and would meet his obligation this June.
Still, his departure adds uncertainty to the future of Democratic legislation currently stalled in Congress and PhRMA’s deal. Despite the industry’s backing, Democrats are struggling to find a path forward to pass a final measure after losing their supermajority in the Senate last month.
‘STRATEGIC BLUNDER’
Tauzin, who served 26 years in the U.S. House of Representatives first as a Democrat before switching to the Republican party, was the major force behind PhRMA’s deal. His group reported spending $26,150,520 in 2009 for lobbying, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.
“His members think he gave away the farm for nothing. So he was really tossed because of a falling out with the board over miscalculating how to negotiate,” a source familiar with the situation said.
Another industry source, however, said Tauzin’s move was not linked to reform but rather a personality clash between the former Louisiana lawmaker and incoming PhRMA chairman, Pfizer CEO Jeffrey Kindler — a Democrat who replaces current PhRMA chairman and AstraZeneca CEO David Brennan on March 18.
However, both PhRMA and Pfizer said the two men looked forward to working with each other.
“Billy has great relations with our board members,” said PhRMA Senior Vice President Ken Johnson.
Brennan added the group was grateful for Tauzin’s “strong leadership and many accomplishments … including his efforts to bring about healthcare reform.”
Still, Republican strategist Scott Reed cited flaws with Tauzin’s approach, saying he “got seduced by Obama world, and it turned out to be a strategic blunder for his industry.”
It is unclear what changes, if any, PhRMA would make in pressing the case for health reform as Democrats try to ramp up support, or what impact the change could have on the industry. PhRMA’s steep pockets all but guarantee its continuing role in shaping health reform negotiations going forward.
As for Tauzin, his tenure is probably best marked by his vocal support for the industry after surviving cancer. He denied his departure was due to any illness. His plans include writing a book, traveling and consulting, a PhRMA source said.
“As the first-ever cancer patient to lead PhRMA as its CEO, I now believe it is time I move on,” Tauzin wrote. “My health is excellent and I look forward to exciting new challenges ahead.”
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