The first thing I thought was, "Eight more years! Eight more years!" And in fact it turned out to be more cheerleading from the White House Office of Health Reform.
Good afternoon,
8 -- that's the number of people every minute who are denied coverage, charged a higher rate or otherwise discriminated against because of a pre-existing condition.1
If there's a pre-existing condition, then it's not "insurance coverage" anymore, it's just "cost-sharing."
Black's Law Dictionary defines insurance as "[a] contract whereby one undertakes to indemnify another against loss, damage, or liability arising from an unknown or contingent event and is applicable only to some contingency or act to occur in the future."(1-1)
The key here is that the event against which the insured is protected is an unknown event. That's the fundamental nature of insurance.
When you build a house in a flood zone, for example, you pay much more for insurance because there is a higher probability your home will be damaged. Same for coastal properties that experience hurricanes, and for properties built on a fault that are more likely to experience earthquakes. If the event is more likely than not to occur, it's unlikely you can buy insurance for it.
In a not very dissimliar way, traditional health insurance provided coverage for unanticipated events - - hospitalization, surgeries, medical expenses related to an accident or illness.
Pre-existing condition clauses protect against a concept known as "adverse selection." An example of adverse selection might be an uninsured female who becomes pregnant and then purchases insurance to avoid the high cost of perinatal medical services. Or an uninsured male diagnosed with cancer who then purchases insurance to avoid the high cost of treatment. Both cases violate the fundamental principle of "insurance" because they involve liabilities that are certain to occur and that are known to one of the parties prior to the transaction.
The Obama administration excoriates pre-existing condition clauses as an evil device used by the health insurance industry to "discriminate" against the sick because they believe, fundamentally, that all health care costs incurred by anyone at anytime should be shared.
I turn again to Black's Law Dictionary: "Social insurance: A comprehensive welfare plan established by law, generally compulsory in nature, and based on a program which spreads the cost of benefits among the entire population rather than on individual recipients."
Such a plan has to be compulsory in nature because of adverse selection. After all, if you could buy insurance (therefore obligating yourself to pay premiums) at any time, why would you ever buy it unless you actually needed it? But if only sick people buy coverage, the costs are borne by a smaller population, and therefore premiums go up. Which in turn lowers people's propensity to buy insurance unless they really need it. This spiraling effect can only be met by an individual mandate, and that is why the President's plan includes one.
8 is also the number of lobbyists hired by special interests to influence health reform for every member of Congress in 2009.2
This is a curious statement. It seems to imply that the "special interests" opposed to health reform are swarming the Capitol to put the skids on the current effort. In a way, then, voting "For" health care reform would strike a blow to special-interest politics and send a message of some sort somewhere. But would it?
Take a look at the actual source document DeParle uses for this statement. It shows a total of 4,525 lobbyists for all of 2009. By far the biggest chunk (16%) is in the category of "Trade, Advocacy and Professional Organizations" - - 745 in total. Then comes "Hospitals" with 207 (5%), then "Misc" with 166, and in fourth place "Insurance" with 105 (2%).
Drill down on the "Trade/Advocacy" category and the picture gets clearer. Here's a sample listing: "60 Plus Association," "AARP," "Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy," "AdvaMed," "Alliance for Care at the End of Life," "Alliance for Children and Families," "Alliance for Home Health Quality and Innovation," "Alliance for Quality Nursing Home Care," "Alliance for Retired Americans."
So let's see what these lobbyists were up to:
"They cut it. They chopped it. They reconstructed it," Julian Zelizer, a Princeton University professor of public affairs, said about health reform lobbying. "They didn’t bury it. I don’t think they wanted to." The lack of serious cost controls in House and Senate bills are a direct result of health industry lobbying efforts, Zelizer said. The American Hospital Association, for example, supports expanding coverage to the House bill’s level of 96 percent of legal residents, but it lobbied against expanding Medicaid eligibility to levels prescribed in the House bill, which would hinder hospital profits. It is also lobbying to revise or delay Medicare payment cuts and patient readmission penalties.
Something bears repeating - - Obama's own words here: "By a wide margin, the biggest threat to our nation's balance sheet is the skyrocketing cost of health care."
So the administration's crowning achievement would be to ram through a bill crafted by special interest influence that pretends to be health insurance reform but which is really simply a broadened mandate for socializing health care costs and does nothing to address the biggest threat to our nation's balance sheet. Please, where do I sign?
The facts speak for themselves -- the status quo isn't working, and special interests are doing everything in their power to maintain that status quo.
Yes, and the health care provider special interests appear to have won. Why's that?
Well, here's a number we haven't discussed yet: 5.8
As in, $5.8 million dollars. That's what Nancy Ann Min DeParle was paid by major medical companies in the three years prior to her appointment as Director of the WHOHR.(2-2)
$5.8 million dollars.
Being denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition is something we all know is wrong. And for those 8 people every minute who can't find health coverage or face discrimination because of a pre-existing condition, reform can't wait.
We don't all know it's wrong. We don't all agree with a social insurance mandate. And no one who raked in $5.8 million from specific interests in the health care industry should be overseeing reform efforts, period. THAT is wrong.
Statistics like these help put the past year's debate over health insurance reform into perspective, demonstrating how broken our health insurance system has become.
They certainly do put the debate in perspective. There's one person that doesn't yet seem to have been represented: the health care consumer. Everyone wants to tell the consumer what is best for them. Instead of making room for innovations that will benefit consumers, the Obama administration would decide what's best and shove it down everyone's throat. This is what consumers are tired of. They are tired of being told what doctors to go to; they are tired of being told what services to get, what not to get; they are tired of being told how much to pay; they are tired of complicated systems that allow one special interest or another to juice their position based on some complex rules that only a few people can figure out. They are tired of government officials that pretend to represent our interests but who are really just puppets for this interest or that.
If spending millions shmoozing politicians didn't work, do you think they'd be doing it? That's the saddest point implicit in DeParle's letter.
So in fact, voting "For" health reform will send a message, and the message is that our representatives can be bought, that American ideals like individualism and personal responsibility are "evil," and that special interests really DO run the government.
Sorry, I vote NO. That's not the kind of reform I want. That's not the kind of reform Americans deserve. But it's the kind of reform we will get if we don't wake up soon.
Each day this week, we'll promote a key number on WhiteHouse.gov and social networks like Facebook and Twitter to raise awareness about why the time is now for health insurance reform.
You can help spread the word about the need for health insurance reform by forwarding this email to your family, friends and online networks.
And you can help spread the word about the misplaced reliance of the Obama administration on more government intervention to prop up an archaic health care reimbursement system - - a move that will break America's back and bank - - by sharing this response will your family, friends, and online networks. Click the envelope at the bottom of this entry to generate an e-mail message.
Let's get it done.
They should change this to: "Let's get *something* - - - ANYTHING - - done."
(1) HealthReform.gov, Coverage Denied: How the Current Health Insurance System Leaves Millions Behind
(1-1) Black's Law Dictionary, 6th Ed.
(2) The Center for Public Integrity, Lobbyists Swarm Capitol To Influence Health Reform
(2-2) Health firms paid Nancy-Ann DeParle $5.8 million
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