Good People,
The truth is now documented and is made clear. It has always been about profit margin that the Insurance Companies are after. It is all about profit margin that counts. Who will defend people’s rights if Government Administration does not provide regulatory procedure guiding principles that are balanced and fair to all if the Government Administration fails to do their part without being compromised or intimidated those vested special interest??
Now that there are politicians with personal priorities with vested interest for the special business community instead of those of their constituents’ voters interest and protection, they truly do not deserve peoples votes if public mandate is not their priorities...........
Here is where people must decide. In this context people must ask: who is discriminative, is it the Policy machinery of the Government that provides a balanced regulator or those of Corporate Special Business Interest? So how can a responsible policy-maker play a game of double deal and deceit over their constituent voters and get away with a bad lie they level on the Affordable Care Act?
The Legislatures who engage in conflict of interest shall not, will not and can never engage to sale a fair policy to their constituent because they are twisted. They also cannot present a proposal to replace what they oppose, because they have none. They have no solution to fix a problem. All they can do is hang somewhere in the middle with empty ballooned talking points and kicking the tin down the road as they are doing with Obamacare (The Affordable Care), and have nothing to offer instead.
They do this because they are compromised and are engaged in conflict of interest hiding their true colors and are making too many noises yet saying nothing of substance.
Their reason for being discriminative and hateful why they keep blocking and obstructing Obamacare (The Affordable Care) with other Obama Policy prospects from letting them take off smoothly is unjustified…….and it is simply because President Obama is Black.................This is unacceptable and people must demand for proper order by denying such politicians votes...........
Judy Miriga
Diaspora Spokesperson
Executive Director
Confederation Council Foundation for Africa Inc.,
USA
http://socioeconomicforum50.blogspot.com/
Diaspora Spokesperson
Executive Director
Confederation Council Foundation for Africa Inc.,
USA
http://socioeconomicforum50.blogspot.com/
------------------------------------------------
The Rachel Maddow Show - McConnell on front lines of GOP 'civil war'
Published on Oct 31, 2013
11/01/2013
Thursday night's videos
Thursday night's videos
Rachel Maddow: GOP 'Tearing Each Other Apart Like They're a Bag of Blindfolded, Hungry Weasels'
Published on Sep 23, 2013
9/23/13 - Rachel Maddow was struck by the timing and the intensity of the Republican proxy war over Obamacare defunding, including the oddity of top Republicans sending opposition research on Ted Cruz to Fox News, of all places. She said that this time, the GOP's "shut-down-the-government adventure" is really amping up the intra-party fighting to 11, with Republicans "tearing each other apart like they're a bag of blindfolded, hungry weasels who someone dosed with PCP.
Maddow broke down how Cruz and his team in Congress have been saying for months that "you are only a real Republican, only a real conservative, if you are willing to go! all! the! way! to burn Washington down until you get your way."
She wondered if the country is at risk of becoming "collateral damage" for a Republican proxy war. Republican Nicolle Wallace said the whole idea of defunding Obamacare is a "mirage" promised to the base by Cruz, admitting she's rather bored with him at this point.
Maddow and Wallace agreed that to a certain extent, the fight is about who is the true conservative here, with Wallace noting how people like Cruz "enjoy being vilified by th
Maddow broke down how Cruz and his team in Congress have been saying for months that "you are only a real Republican, only a real conservative, if you are willing to go! all! the! way! to burn Washington down until you get your way."
She wondered if the country is at risk of becoming "collateral damage" for a Republican proxy war. Republican Nicolle Wallace said the whole idea of defunding Obamacare is a "mirage" promised to the base by Cruz, admitting she's rather bored with him at this point.
Maddow and Wallace agreed that to a certain extent, the fight is about who is the true conservative here, with Wallace noting how people like Cruz "enjoy being vilified by th
The Real Reasons Insurers Are Canceling Policies
Posted: 11/18/2013 10:50 am
by Wendell Potter
Now that President Obama has said it's OK with him if insurance companies keep their policyholders in health plans that don't meet the standards established by the Affordable Care Act, at least for another year, the big question is whether insurers will take him up on the offer.
The answer: it depends.
Some insurance executives will view the offer as one they can't turn down. Even though Karen Ignagni, president of America's Health Insurance Plans, the industry's big PR and lobbying group, had nothing good to say about Obama's proposal, keep in mind that she doesn't run an insurance company. While industry executives look to her to comment on what politicians do, they make their own decisions when it comes to their companies' bottom lines.
Here's what Ignagni was quoted as saying in a FOX News story Friday:
"The only reason consumers are getting notices about their current coverage changing is because the ACA (Affordable Care Act) requires all policies to cover a broad range of benefits that go beyond what many people choose to purchase today."
Not so fast. There are other reasons some folks are being told they'll have to change health plans next year. Many of them are having to switch plans not because of Obamacare but because their insurance companies want to move them into policies with higher profit margins.
Insurance companies have been sending similar notices to their customers for years. My son Alex -- and thousands of other customers of a Blue Cross plan in Pennsylvania -- got such a notice four years ago, months before Congress passed the health reform law.
Why? The insurer wanted to move those policyholders out of a plan with a reasonable $500 annual deductible and into one with a deductible ten times that amount. To accomplish that, Blue Cross notified its policyholders that their health plan would not be available in 2010. Their options were to switch to the high-deductible policy, which would still cost them a couple of dollars more each month, or to another plan with that reasonable $500 deductible. If they chose the latter, their monthly premiums would increase 65 percent.
Notices like the one Alex got have provided a mechanism for insurers to implement a years-long industry strategy of shifting more and more of the cost of medical care to their policyholders. And that strategy will continue until every last one of us is in a high-deductible plan.
Some of you are likely old enough to remember the days before managed care when almost all Americans with private health insurance were in indemnity plans. In an old-fashioned indemnity plan, the insurer didn't constrain us in a limited network of doctors and hospitals and didn't call the shots about whether a knee replacement or liver transplant your doctor recommended was really necessary.
Those days are long gone. Everybody eventually got notices that those plans were being discontinued. They were replaced by HMOs and PPOs with limited provider networks and armies of utilization review nurses and medical directors who decided if you would get coverage for your new knee or new liver.
In most cases, it was our employers who killed off the indemnity plans in favor of managed care. But eventually, HMOs and PPOs also fell out of favor. The managed care backlash of the late 1990s forced insurers to abandon some of their utilization review practices and to add more doctors and hospitals to their skinny networks. That led to shrinking profit margins -- and to the latest silver bullet from the insurance industry: high-deductible plans.
Before Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, insurance companies already were making rapid progress in implementing their business plans of "migrating" their customers from traditional managed care plans to so-called "consumer-directed" plans, the industry euphemism for high-deductible policies. At the same time they've been requiring us to pay more out of our own pockets for care, they've also been implementing a strategy of reducing benefits. Investors and Wall Street financial analysts refer to these common industry practices as "benefit buydowns." That's another euphemism, by the way.
I myself -- and thousands of my fellow Cigna employees -- were notified several years ago, long before I left my job, that our HMOs and PPOs were being discontinued. Yep, we got notices in the mail. If we wanted to stay in a Cigna-subsidized health plan, we would have to switch to a high-deductible plan. The same thing has happened to tens of millions of other Americans in recent years.
Yet if you relied on the Washington media for your news and information about health care, you'd think that insurance companies would never have considered sending policy discontinuation notices to their policyholders until forced to do so by Obamacare.
The truth: they have always done this when profits were at stake.
Which is why some insurers will be happy as clams to be able to keep their policyholders in plans that don't meet the ACA's standards. Many of those plans -- especially the junk insurance plans many folks are in -- are exceedingly profitable.
For people who are in those plans who have complained about their discontinuation notices, I hope they will shop around. Chances are, they'll be able to get much better coverage at a better price. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act.
This Blogger's Books from
Wendell Potter, a contributing writer to the Huffington Post, is also an author, public speaker and president of Wendell Potter Consulting. After a 25-year career in business, he left his job as head of communications for one of the nation's largest health insurers and became a vocal advocate for health care reform and a critic of insurance company abuses.
In widely covered testimony before the Senate Commerce, Science and Technology Committee in June 2009, Wendell disclosed how insurance companies, as part of their efforts to boost profits, have engaged in practices that have resulted in millions of Americans being forced into the ranks of the uninsured. Wendell also described how the insurance industry has developed and implemented strategic communications plans, based on deceptive public relations and advertising and lobbying efforts, to defeat or weaken reform initiatives.
During his business career, Wendell held a variety of positions at Humana Inc. and CIGNA Corporation. When he left CIGNA in 2008 he was serving as head of corporate communications and as the company's chief corporate spokesperson.
In addition to his consulting business, he is a columnist at the Center for Public Integrity. A former reporter, he covered Congress, the White House and Supreme Court and wrote a weekly political column for Scripps-Howard newspapers.
In widely covered testimony before the Senate Commerce, Science and Technology Committee in June 2009, Wendell disclosed how insurance companies, as part of their efforts to boost profits, have engaged in practices that have resulted in millions of Americans being forced into the ranks of the uninsured. Wendell also described how the insurance industry has developed and implemented strategic communications plans, based on deceptive public relations and advertising and lobbying efforts, to defeat or weaken reform initiatives.
During his business career, Wendell held a variety of positions at Humana Inc. and CIGNA Corporation. When he left CIGNA in 2008 he was serving as head of corporate communications and as the company's chief corporate spokesperson.
In addition to his consulting business, he is a columnist at the Center for Public Integrity. A former reporter, he covered Congress, the White House and Supreme Court and wrote a weekly political column for Scripps-Howard newspapers.
No comments:
Post a Comment