1. Karen Ignani, the president of the insurance industry trade lobby, America's Health Insurance Plans, offers to end the outrageous industry practice of charging women more than men for health coverage, and is widely praised for the concession.
Even though the reprehensible practice of institutionalized gender bias should have been considered out of bounds long ago. The industry was not even shamed by the report last fall by the National Women's Law Center that insurers charged 40-year-old women up to 48 percent more than men of the same age for the same coverage.
And even though the “offer” remains conditional. AHIP continues to demand conditions in health reform proposals now before Congress, including a requirement that all Americans currently without coverage be forced to buy private insurance, and that Congress block any inclusion of a public alternative to private insurance. Now they've increased the ante and want federal pre-emption of state-based public protection regulations on insurers, such as requirements in a number of states that private insurers must cover such critical basics as maternity care or preventive cancer screenings.
Instead of gushing over AHIP for being conciliatory, it's time to demand the insurance industry stop holding our health hostage and end all discriminatory practices, including all higher charges based on age, health status, where you live, or other factors that serve as a financial barrier to access to care.
There can be no more excuses, no more exceptions, no more impediments to care. If anything, the widespread disparities and offensive pricing practices that characterize the private system are a major reason why so many Americans are fed up with the insurance based system and want real reform, such as a single payer/Medicare for all approach.
Which brings us to Ignani's other remarkable comment yesterday.
2. “We are not asking people to trust us, we are asking people to trust government.”
Yes, Ignani apparently actually said that. And it was presumably not just a Freudian slip. In other words, a tacit admission that the insurance industry has no credibility with the public — and given their legacy of practices such as charging women more because they are of childbearing age they don't deserve it — and have to rely on the government to give them any trust with the public.
Yes, that government. The same government the insurance industry regularly excoriates “government-run” healthcare and is doing its best to provoke fear and loathing of even a public option alternative to private insurance.
3. The very Republicans who the Democratic leadership is bending over backwards to accommodate on the final form of a health plan are making it increasingly clear that they will work to defeat the legislation no matter what it is.
As now reported, GOP strategist Frank Lutz has put together a 26-page memo for the
So a bill is being crafted to please the Republicans who will oppose it anyway on the assumption that they can use the specter of “government-run” health care, the same government Karen Ignani admits the public trusts more than her insurance industry, to regain political power at the polls.
Which, finally brings us to:
4. The Senate Finance Committee and its chair Sen. Max Baucus held a hearing Tuesday shutting out doctors and nurses and community supporters of single payer while providing a red carpet to AHIP, the Chamber of Commerce, Blue Cross Blue Shield, America's Health Insurance Plans, Business Roundtable, and the rightwing Heritage Foundation.
No wonder that some finally turned to peaceful protest and subjecting themselves to arrest.
The irony or tragedy, if you prefer, is that by trying to silence the voices of doctors, nurses and advocates of broader reform the Democratic leaders have, as the Washington Times put it, “forfeit a crucial bargaining chip with Republicans, meaning that any compromise with Republicans would swing too far toward the center or right” and leave themselves in a position of crafting even more unworkable reform.