The White House Blog - Health Care in Hands of Consumers

Putting Health Care in the Hands of Consumers – Not Insurance Companies

Posted by Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on February 19, 2010 at 03:17 PM EST

As families across the country struggle to make ends meet in this troubled economy, many are getting difficult news: their health insurance premiums are rising. Significantly.  And a new report today indicates that premiums for seniors in Medicare Advantage plans will continue to rise. This is the continuation of an unfortunate trend. This is the continuation of an unfortunate trend. Seniors who remained enrolled in their Medicare Advantage plans between 2009 and 2010 have experienced rapidly increasing premiums, at 32 percent on average, with a steeper 78 percent average increase for enrollees in private fee-for-service plans.
But while seniors are suffering, insurance companies are doing better than ever. Humana earned $452.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2009 from its Medicare Advantage plans, compared with $267.3 million a year earlier, a 70 percent increase. At the same time, these companies are being vastly overpaid by the federal government, making huge profits and sticking seniors with higher bills.
This news comes just one day after we at the Department of Health and Human Services released a report showing how insurance companies are driving up premiums at unnecessary, alarming rates.   In California, beneficiaries recently received letters from Anthem Blue Cross announcing their rates would go up as high as 39 percent. Elsewhere, in the last year alone, large insurers 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.
What makes this harder to take is that insurance premiums aren’t the only numbers on the rise -- insurance industry profits are also growing by leaps and bounds. The five largest health insurance companies – WellPoint, UnitedHealth Group, Cigna, Aetna, and Humana – earned combined profits of $12.2 billion in 2009, 56 percent more than the previous year. Moreover, the CEOs of these same companies are each taking home up to $24 million per year.
Insurance companies say that if consumers don’t like it, they can shop elsewhere. Yet we all know that finding a policy on the individual market is not as easy as it sounds. In many cases, insurers can slash your coverage when you need it most. If you have a pre-existing condition, they may deny you coverage altogether.
To show how out of touch insurance companies are with middle-class families, a recent study found that nearly 75 percent of consumers looking for coverage on the individual market never bought a plan – and most of them cited cost as their primary reason. Yet insurers are turning a blind eye. As reported in Arkansas, one Blue Cross plan wanted to increase rates by 28 percent, but regulators forced the plan to settle for just 11 percent. In a broken health care system without competition, transparency, or choice there is little stopping insurance companies from jacking up rates, and putting greater costs onto the backs of working Americans.
Our broken system is working for insurance companies, not families. While profits and premiums are going up, coverage is going down. And three of the top five insurers cut the proportion of premiums they spent on customers' medical care last year, committing more to salaries, administrative expenses, and profits.
Without health insurance reform, we will continue to get more of the same. That is unacceptable.
Reform will protect consumers from abusive insurance industry practices. It will encourage competition among insurance companies in order to drive down costs and offer consumers choices to get the coverage that’s right for them. Reform will also bring down premiums and limit out-of-pocket costs that eat into the family budget.
These efforts won’t just help our health care system – they will also help our economy. Lowering health care costs through reform could generate between 250,000 and 400,000 jobs a year.
It's time we put the health of American families back in the hands of consumers – not the insurance industry.
Kathleen Sebelius is Secretary of Health and Human Services

Public Option up for Grabs [lets see if they can get the 41 they need]

The president will not say anything about what the Senate is trying to do with reconciliation because his summit with the Democrats and the Republicans is coming up this week.  And he does not want to do something that will knock off the bi-partisan bill that he wants. And hopefully in this summit the Republicans will come up with some ideas that will sound rational.  Or will they be the party of no, will they even show up. It will be interesting to watch.  And with it being telecast live I can't wait to see what happens.  Did you catch the second day of CPAC, will catch it here.  

Reid hints he could back public option

By Jordan Fabian - 02/19/10 04:47 PM ET

The office of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) Friday provided a hint that the top senator could reintroduce the public health insurance option under the right circumstances.
In a carefully-worded statement, Reid spokesman Rodell Mollineau addressed majority leader's stance on the government-run plan for the first time since a group of senators sparked talks of passing it using the controversial budget reconciliation process, which only requires the approval of 51 senators.
Mollineau said:

Senator Reid has always and continues to support the public option as a way to drive down costs and create competition. That is why he included the measure in his original health care proposal.

If a decision is made to use reconciliation to advance health care, Senator Reid will work with the White House, the House, and members of his caucus in an effort to craft a public option that can overcome procedural obstacles and secure enough votes.

The public plan was thought to be dead when Reid stripped it from the final healthcare bill in December because he could not attract enough centrist support with the bill included.

But a letter circulating among Democratic senators has given some Democrats hope that the plan could become law. 

Senate Democratic Caucus Vice Chairman Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.)  on Thursday became the first senator to sign the bill, bringing the total number of signatories to 17 and adding even more momentum behind the push.

But the inclusion of the public option is still a far way from becoming reality in part because of hangups that Mollineau tacitly acknowledged in his statement.

Reid will serve as the ultimate arbiter of whether or not the senators will pass healthcare reform legislation using the reconciliation process. And it's while its clear that Democratic leaders are weighing the use of reconciliation to pass a bill, they have still not arrived at a final decision.

Still, Reid's statement indicates that the leaders are considering the reintroducing the public option alongside their deliberations on reconciliation.

Republicans have scoffed at the renewed push for a public plan, saying it is out of step with what the majority of Americans want.

They have also said that the election of Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) should serve as indication that the public does not want Democrats to push through with their current healthcare bill.

MoveOn pressures Obama on public option

By Jeffrey Young - 02/19/10 03:34 PM ET

The public option revival movement seems to keep picking up steam and MoveOn.org wants President Barack Obama to notice.

During a week that more and more Democratic lawmakers declare it's the put the public option back into healthcare reform, MoveOn sent an alert to its members Friday urging them to contact the White House and tell Obama to get on board. So far, 18 Democratic senators and more than 119 House Democrats have signed on to letters in support of including a public option in the final healthcare bill.

"The public option was given up for dead, but in the last week, first a trickle, and now a flood of Democrats have been calling for it to be in the final 'reconciliation' bill," the alert says. "It'll be a whole new ballgame for the public option if President Obama throws his weight behind it too." [Emphasis theirs]

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Thursday that the Obama administration would get behind the public option if they believed the votes were there in the Senate. Less than a week before Obama will host a bipartisan healthcare reform summit and just days before Obama is supposed to unveil his latest healthcare reform plan, media reports indicate the public option won't be on the table that day.

Liberal activists were vocally unsatisfied with Obama's advocacy for the public option. Though he supports it, and administration officials have said the same repeatedly, liberals don't believe ever put any muscle behind it, which made it easier for centrist senators like Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) to insist it be stripped from the bill.

But with Democrats now eyeballing the budget reconciliation process as a way of passing a final healthcare reform bill with a simple majority, centrist votes aren't necessarily essential, giving some liberals the sense that there's an opening for them to bring the public option back to life.

From: "Kat Barr, MoveOn.org Political Action"
Date: February 19, 2010 1:28:03 PM EST
Subject: Tell Obama: Fight for the public option

Dear MoveOn member,

Big news out of Washington: President Obama plans to unveil his preferred version of health care legislation before next week's bipartisan health care summit.

The public option was given up for dead, but in the last week, first a trickle, and now a flood of Democrats have been calling for it to be in the final "reconciliation" bill.

It'll be a whole new ballgame for the public option if President Obama throws his weight behind it too.

Can you call the White House today and urge the president to include a strong public option in his health care package?
Here's where to call:

The White House
202-456-1111

Then, please report your call by clicking here:

http://pol.moveon.org/whcalls/indexd.html

Most pundits and Washington insiders gave the public option up for dead in December. But they're being proven wrong (again).

Under a process called "reconciliation," the Senate can pass the public option with a simple majority—so it's not subject to threats from conservative Democrats. And this week, 18 senators signed a letter to Senate Majority Leader Reid urging him to bring the public option up for a majority vote, following 119 House Democrats who sent a similar letter earlier this month.

What's more, yesterday Obama's Secretary of Health and Human Services said the president would support the Senate if they decide to bring the public option back into the fold.

The public option has support from a majority of Americans and in both houses of Congress—and just makes good sense for helping lower skyrocketing health care costs and providing choice for more Americans. We've been fighting for it since this debate began, and we need the president to step up and fight too.

Thanks for all you do.

–Kat, Joan, Peter, Carrie, and the rest of the team