I am sure the GOP’s obstructionism has got him wound up, but even more so his own party’s unnecessarily slow maneuvering in the Senate has got to be burning him up as well.
The Republican Party is “a wholly owned subsidiary of the insurance industry,” Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) charged on the House floor. When Republican Rep. Dan Lungren (Calif.) objected to the accusation and took the extraordinary step of asking that Weiner’s “words be taken down,” Weiner pushed back.
“You really don’t want to go here, Mr. Lungren,” Weiner said. Asking that words be taken down is a move on the House floor that is rarely made and carries great weight.
Weiner, after a pause, asked to have his words withdrawn and said he’d substitute new ones. “Make no mistake about it. Every single Republican I have ever met in my entire life is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the insurance industry,” Weiner clarified.
State of the Union Guest Cindy Parker-Martinez’s postion:
Cindy Parker-Martinez (Belle Isle, FL)
Cindy is a mother of two young children, who shared her story of the problems her family faces with the current health care system at a Health Care Community Discussion held at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, one of thousands of discussions held nationwide in December 2008. In April 2008, Cindy, her husband, and her son were all denied insurance coverage on the individual insurance market because of pre-existing conditions. Her 11-month old daughter was also denied coverage due to an insurance company age requirement of 12 months. Both Cindy and her husband are currently uninsured because they cannot afford the insurance offered at her husband’s employer. Although they previously paid their premium, they could not afford to keep up the monthly payments after receiving thousands of dollars in medical bills from her husband’s unexpected 6-day hospital stay for pneumonia. Their family’s income is too high for them to qualify for Medicaid. Cindy and her husband currently have no insurance and have thousands of dollars in medical debt.
This explains how community rating works to control premium creep and relate cost to the people’s ability to afford it
Remarkably, in virtually all other industrialized nations, this issue is hardly ever raised. Community rating there has long been widely accepted and is unlikely to be abandoned in the foreseeable future.
The health systems of Switzerland, the Netherlands and Germany are frequently cited as potential models for a reformed American health system. All three countries offer their citizens a wide choice of health insurers — none of which is a government-run health plan. Yet in all three countries full community rating is de rigueur.
Swiss citizens, for example, are required to purchase insurance coverage for a comprehensive health-benefit package from a large menu of private health insurance companies that compete for customers on the basis of the premium they charge for that coverage.
Profits cannot be earned on insurance for the basic package. Premiums do vary among competing insurers, but for a given insurer they can vary only by the deductible and coinsurance rates of the different policies. Neither the individual’s health status nor age affects the premium charged the individual by a given insurer. Health insurers ending up with an older or sicker enrolled risk pool then receive compensation from a risk-equalization fund.
Similarly, Dutch citizens are required to purchase insurance coverage for a comprehensive benefit package from a menu of private for-profit or not-for-profit insurers.
