Too Little, Too Late: The Health Insurance Industry Unveils a New Plan to Reform Health Care

from OurFuture.org:



Too Little, Too Late: The Health Insurance Industry Unveils a New Plan to Reform Health Care
By Monica Sanchez

December 3rd, 2008 - 5:11pm ET


After decades of controlling the dialogue on health care and thwarting health care reform with the now infamous Harry and Louise ads, the health insurance industry is vying for control of the conversation at the health reform table. Today America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the insurance industry's trade association, released a "new" reform proposal. But it's essentially more of the same. They have made many of the same proposals before.

Not surprisingly, the main focus of their proposals is protecting their profits.

Let's take a look at the proposals they highlighted in their press release.

AHIP's first proposal is to create an advisory group to make recommendations on how to control health care costs:



This delaying tactic shows the health insurance industry is still very behind on health reform policy. Many recommendations on how to bring down health care costs already exist, from offering a public plan to compete on a level playing field with the private plans, to making better use of health information technology, to paying providers based on performance instead of based on the number of procedures they perform, to allowing the government to negotiate with drug companies for lower drug prices.

The option they are most afraid of is a public insurance plan option that creates true competition in the health insurance and provider markets. Data shows that a few private plans have quasi-monopoly power in most states and the smaller plans are engaged in shadow pricing keeping costs high and driving up their profits with total disregard for the health care needs of people with costly conditions. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2008124903/too-little-too-late-health-insurance-industry-unveils-new-plan-reform-health-c

They have been making billions on pain and sickness .... the insurance industry should
be booted from health care .... let them do homes, cars, life, and other stuff.

Single payer national health care now.

their forms and process the paperwork they require?

n/t