The San Francisco Chronicle reported this morning on the front page about the landmark insurance reform we expect to be spending the next fifteen months working for. Insurance companies, the legislature and recent court rulings have all turned against consumers, much like they had in 1988, when California voters struck back with the toughest insurance reform in America: Proposition 103.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported this morning on the front page about the landmark insurance reform we expect to be spending the next fifteen months working for.

Insurance companies, the legislature and recent court rulings have all turned against consumers, much like they had in 1988, when California voters struck back with the toughest insurance reform in America: Proposition 103.

By 2014, all of us will be required to buy health insurance or face tax penalties. The problem is that health insurance companies can charge whatever they like and raise premiums at will in California. This is the same scenario that drivers faced in 1988 when mandatory auto insurance laws forced drivers to pay for policies many couldn’t afford. Voters then required auto insurers to pay drivers a 20% refund and to get permission before they ever raised rates again.

Just like in 1988, insurance stalwarts in the statehouse are now holding insurance premium regulation hostage. The companies have given the politicians millions so they can make billions overcharging you. And, as in 1988, the California Supreme Court has issued several rulings taking away the right of policyholders to hold insurance companies accountable.

If we go to the ballot with a 1988-style 20% rollback in health insurance premiums, will you be with us?

Our “Proposition 103 Part Two” ballot measure will have to be filed by November 2011 in order to begin signature collection so it gets on the ballot for November 2012.  

The main provisions of the ballot measure are as follows:

1- A 20% rate rollback in health insurance rates to reverse five years of unwarranted double-digit price gouging;

2- Require health insurance companies to seek permission from the elected insurance commissioner before raising rates, as auto insurance companies must, and application of other Prop 103 protections to health insurance companies;

3- Prohibit all insurance companies from raising your rates or refusing to renew you because of your credit score, claims or insurance history;

4- Allow consumers to join a non-profit public health plan administered by CALPERS instead of having to buy insurance from private insurance companies;  

5- Correct court rulings that have misinterpreted the law to benefit the insurance industry;

6- Create a “three strikes and you’re out of California” law for insurance companies that repeatedly violate the state’s consumer protection laws

7- Prohibit health insurance companies from forcing you to sign arbitration agreements as a condition of enrollment.  

We want to go to the ballot in November 2012. Will you be with us? Click here to sign up!

Together we can move health care reform forward in California and America.

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Jamie Court is president of Consumer Watchdog and author of The Progressive’s Guide To Raising Hell.

The California Senate Appropriations Committee is expected to vote on Thursday on AB 52, a bill which will give the California Insurance Commissioner, Dave Jones, the ability to regulate health insurance premium hikes. This is something that many other states have the power to do, but which California’s health insurance companies have fought tooth and nail to prevent. Finally there’s a chance they could lose this battle.

Thursday is a crucial vote — do or die. If the bill is not passed out of the Appropriations Committee it is dead.  If it does pass it will go to the Senate floor for a vote (it’s already passed the Assembly), which must happen by September 8th.

There are nine committee members, six Democrats and three Republicans.  None of the Republicans is expected to vote for the bill, therefore five of the six Democrats’ votes are needed.  

Currently we have no idea whether all the Democrats on the committee are in favor of the bill or not.  Here are their phone numbers — it’s time to call them and find out exactly where they stand and indicate your support, as a California citizen, of the bill.

Senator Christine Kehoe (Chair) — (916) 651-4039

Senator Elaine Alquist — (916) 651-4013

Senator Ted W. Lieu — (916) 651-4028

Senator Fran Pavley — (916) 651-4023

Senator Curren Price — (916) 651-4026

Senator Darrell Steinberg — (916) 651-4006

If you find out the position of any of these Senators on AB 52, please post a comment!

You can find out if any of these Senators is your Senator, and if not you can call your California State Senator as well and ask them to support AB 52. Just type in your zip code on this easy to use web page to find your Senator’s name and phone number.  

As I was writing this diary, I received email from Rick Jacobs, Chair of the Courage Campaign, which has been active in pushing AB 52 through the Legislature:

Are you tired of Kaiser, Blue Cross, Aetna and other insurance companies raising your rates without any recourse? Just last week, Kaiser announced that it would raise rates on Los Angeles teachers, costing the LA Unified School District $40 million a year, even though Kaiser is one of the most profitable health insurance companies in America.

We can stop this madness. This week the California Senate Appropriations Committee will decide whether AB 52 even makes it to the Senate floor for a full vote. Kaiser and friends have spent millions on legalized bribes to kill it.

You have the power to force our Senate to act for you — not Kaiser, not Blue Cross and not Anthem. Send a quick email to the Appropriations Committee telling them we are watching them and expect them to work for us, not for giant health insurance corporations.

You helped pass AB 52 out of the Assembly. This bill would simply allow the state to approve or deny the outrageous rate hikes Kaiser and friends propose. Of course, CEOs like Kaiser’s George Halvorson would rather keep making millions of dollars, but that’s not good for you or me. It’s just good for him and his rich executives who are unaccountable.

Tell the Senate Appropriations Committee to vote yes on AB 52 because they work for the people, not for Kaiser, Blue Cross or Aetna.

Let’s get the bill out of committee and then we can push like hell to win in the Senate.

You can participate in the Courage Campaign’s organized emailing to the Committee members by using their interface.

Kossacks like Seneca Doane and others have been encouraging Kossacks for months to help get this bill passed.  Now it’s all coming down to a couple of weeks.  Will you help?

Again, here are the people to call:

Senator Christine Kehoe (Chair) — (916) 651-4039

Senator Elaine Alquist — (916) 651-4013

Senator Ted W. Lieu — (916) 651-4028

Senator Fran Pavley — (916) 651-4023

Senator Curren Price — (916) 651-4026

Senator Darrell Steinberg — (916) 651-4006

Los Angeles Times business columnist Mike Hiltzik offers a stark choice to state legislators in his Wednesday column. What'll it be, has asks: the millions of dollars that the insurance industry pours into your campaigns and treasure chests, or the millions of Californians battered by health premiums that kill the family budget or company benefits account? Plus the 8.2 million Californians with no health insurance at all?

Los Angeles Times business columnist Mike Hiltzik offers a stark choice to state legislators in his Wednesday column. What'll it be, has asks: the millions of dollars that the insurance industry pours into your campaigns and treasure chests, or the millions of Californians battered by health premiums that kill the family budget or company benefits account? Plus the 8.2 million Californians with no health insurance at all?

The choice Hiltzik lays out is between legislation (AB52 by Mike Feuer) that would finally give the state insurance commissioner the power to deny or modify unreasonable health insurance rate increases before they go into effect, and the exaggerated or outright false charges being slung by the industry. That opposition campaign is just a  cover for the real issue: the power of industry campaign money and its lobbying force.

From 2007 through this year, for example, Anthem Blue Cross has made campaign contributions totaling nearly $5 million to candidates, parties and political action committees, according to state records. Blue Shield has contributed more than $2.3 million in the same period…..

Across the country, prior approval of healthcare rates is becoming more the norm, now effective in 34 states and the District of Columbia for at least some policies, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The procedure closes a gap left by federal healthcare reform that leaves rate regulation to the states and provides only loosely for premium review. Once again, AB 52 provides state legislators with a chance to declare whom they really represent — their voters or their campaign donors.

The insurance industry is going after legislators that it has contributed to, or who otherwise look susceptible. That helps explain why the legislation barely squeaked through a key committee vote last week after two Democrats voted against it.

The final vote in the Assembly has to come by Friday. Lobbyists will be swarming the halls outside the chamber, intending to ride the last-minute chaos of speed-voting to kill the rate regulation bill. Among the lies the lobbyists will be forcing down legislators' throats is that regulation will somehow raise, not lower, insurance premiums. Again, Hiltzik nails it:

Last year both Aetna and Anthem backed away from huge rate hikes after independent actuaries found glaring mathematical errors in their rate filings.

A study in 2009 by the New York state insurance department found that these sorts of errors, and worse, were rife under that state's then-deregulated system, which resembled California's toothless regime. New York found that insurers routinely under-reported such errors and refunded (retroactively) only about a third of the ill-gotten excess to policyholders. The study helped goad lawmakers there into reinstating prior approval after about 15 years without it.

As it happens, California's health insurance lobby has tried to use New York's experience as Exhibit A for the case against prior approval. The association contends that five of the 10 states with the highest individual healthcare premiums are subject to prior approval, with New York leading the list. There's a problem with this claim, however: New York's prior-approval rules went into effect only this year. In other words, New York's high individual premiums are the result, if anything, of the absence of prior approval.

When I asked a CAHP spokeswoman where the figures came from, she said they conducted "some unique research." That's one way of putting it.

Even if AB52 passes the Assembly, it still has to take the same tortured path through the state Senate. The outrageous rate-spiking by insurance companies last year and this ought to be the final shove for honest health insurance regulation in California, just like the state has for auto and homeowner insurance. But in today's legislature, nothing is sure. To take action with a message to your legislator, click here.

If you've read this far and want to know more,  Read Consumer Watchdog’s new report on how rate regulation works to hold down premiums. And see what Sen. Dianne Feinstein says about the need for regulation.

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Posted by Judy Dugan, research director for Consumer Watchdog, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to providing an effective voice for taxpayers and consumers in an era when special interests dominate public discourse, government and politics. Visit us on Facebook and Twitter.

The health insurance industry's lobbying muscle in the California Legislature is legendary. It's the reason that the state's insurance commissioner remains all but toothless to reject outrageous spikes in health insurance premiums and rates, unlike in a majority of other states. So it's not a shock that a new version of a bill to let the state insurance commissioner reject or modify health insurance premiums barely squeaked through the state Assembly's Appropriations Committee late last week with the minimum 9 votes.

The health insurance industry's lobbying muscle in the California Legislature is legendary. It's the reason that the state's insurance commissioner remains all but toothless to reject outrageous spikes in health insurance premiums and rates, unlike in a majority of other states. So it's not a shock that a new version of a bill to let the state insurance commissioner reject or modify health insurance premiums barely squeaked through the state Assembly's Appropriations Committee late last week with the minimum 9 votes.

+++Take Action Here to Cut Insurance Premiums, Send a Message to Your Legislator+++

The bill will face another firestorm of industry lobbying when it comes up for a full Assembly vote in a few days.

This legislation ought to be a slam dunk, after Blue Shield tried to jam through premium increases of up to 86% in a single year. Aetna and Blue Cross weren't much better. The only reason any insurer backed down even a little was because of public rage, which is not a good regulatory tool in the long run. When every Californian is required to show proof of insurance as of 2014, Californians will be even more in need of protection from insurance industry greed. And nearly every major newspaper has supported health insurance regulation–the LA Times made its second strong editorial argument Tuesday. (text of editorial is below)

So what was up with the two Democrats–Charles Calderon and Jose Solorio–who voted against the rate regulation bill (AB 52, Mike Feuer)? First they reportedly tried to get author Feuer to accept last-minute substantive changes without a chance to examine what they meant–and Feuer rightly refused. Then Calderon and Soloio voted no. Hmm. Solorio is among the top five recipients of insurance industry money in the Assembly. And Calderon is the sponsor of a bill (AB 736)–strongly supported by the health insurance insurance and broker industries–that would remove consumer protections from health broker misdeeds or errors and indirectly raise health insurance premiums.

Two million Californians lost their insurance during the recession, bringing the state's total uninsured to 8 million. From the mail we get, a whole lot of people are right on the edge of having to drop Health insurance. It's long past time for the largest state in the nation to get a grip on health insurance spikes in the high double digits, even as overall medical inflation sinks to around 4% a year. Something is wrong with this picture, even if it's just right for insurance companies' record profits.

We hope Calderon and Solorio were just making a procedural protest and that they'll protect consumers, not insurance company profits, when the Assembly votes this week on AB52. It'll be close. Here's the button to Take Action.

A lid on health insurance rate increases

California regulators should be given the power to reject unreasonable increases in health insurance premiums.

May 31, 2011

Opponents of a bill that would allow state regulators to reject unreasonable increases in health insurance premiums are stepping up their attacks on the measure, contending that it would push premiums even higher and make healthcare less available. These arguments are a smokescreen, and lawmakers shouldn't lose sight of the need to give consumers of health insurance the same protection they have in auto and homeowners' policies.

One allegation is that the bill — AB 52, sponsored by Rep. Mike Feuer (D-Los Angeles) — would enrich the consumer advocates who challenge proposed rate increases. That charge is based on the bill's requirement that insurers cover the "reasonable" fees and costs incurred by advocates who make a "substantial contribution" to the ruling by regulators or the courts. The same perfectly sensible language is in Proposition 103, the initiative that empowered state regulators to reject excessive automobile, property and casualty insurance rates.

Giving consumers the opportunity to participate in rate reviews is a valuable counterweight to the shifting policies in Sacramento, where regulators' zeal often depends on who won the last election. And the "substantial contribution" requirement for getting fees reimbursed deters frivolous challenges. Consumer Watchdog, an advocacy group, says its interventions have reduced insurers' proposed auto, home and earthquake premiums by more than $2 billion since 2000; insurers have had to spend an additional $5 million to cover the consumer group's expenses.

Smaller premium increases might seem like a good thing to consumers, but evidently doctors and hospitals feel differently. Their trade associations are opposing AB 52, arguing that it could artificially reduce the rates insurers pay them. Such reductions, they say, could persuade more providers not to take Medicare and Medi-Cal patients because they count on reimbursements from private insurers to cover some of the cost of government-insured patients. But those cross-subsidies are precisely the sort of distortions and inefficiencies that policymakers should be trying to eliminate from the healthcare system, not prop up.

The healthcare reform law Congress passed last year tries to combat cross-subsidies, and it limits insurers' profit margins by tying them to the amount spent on medical care. That link, however, gives insurers a perverse incentive to grow their profits by inflating the amounts they pay doctors and hospitals. That's a good reason to give state regulators the power not just to review rates, as California law now provides, but to reject them when they're unreasonable. Here's another: As of 2014, the healthcare reform law will require all adult Americans to obtain health coverage. Regulators ought to have the power to stop insurers from gouging that captive market.

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Posted by Judy Dugan, research director for Consumer Watchdog, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to providing an effective voice for taxpayers and consumers in an era when special interests dominate public discourse, government and politics. Visit us on Facebook and Twitter.

Washington D.C. — It's hard to imagine that a briefing on rate regulation and a new Consumer Watchdog report would draw a fascinated audience, but this is DC.  Journalists and nonprofit advocates spent 90 minutes Wednesday as Sen. Dianne Feinstein and an expert panel made an impassioned call for getting health insurance companies under control with tough regulation of the rates they can charge. As the senator put it, without mincing a single word:

“While insurance premiums continue to spiral out of control, CEO's paychecks are getting bigger, and insurance companies are spending less on medical care and more on profits. Today, in 17 states including California, state regulators do not have authority to block or modify insurance rate increases that are excessive, unjustified, or discriminatory. In order to protect consumers from skyrocketing insurance premiums, state regulators need this explicit authority to ensure rates are justified. This is why I have introduced the Health Insurance Rate Review Act of 2011, and why I have endorsed state legislation in California, AB 52, to close this loophole.”

The senator was the lead speaker as Consumer Watchdog released a report leaving no doubt that the only way to protect consumers from spiraling rate increases is what's called prior approval rate regulation: The insurance commissioner gets to see rate increases well ahead of time and can reject them outright or demand modification. Consumers can challenge excessive rates on their own, and be paid for their time. It's the only way to keep insurance companies honest, and also enlist them in actually helping to keep down overall health costs.

The report, called “Health Reform and Rate Regulation: Can't Have One Without The Other,” outlines why California has the best, most protective model of rate regulation–except it applies only to auto and other property and casualty insurance. The report illustrates both successes and failures in other states, and outlines a role for the federal government in making sure states protect consumers.

For the short version, here's the news release.

Consumer Watchdog founder Harvey Rosenfield, Washington director Carmen  Balber and Maine Superintendent of Insurance Mila Kaufman (a creative and fair consumer advocate) held a lively panel discussion–the journalists present stuck around for the whole thing, which is not the usual way.

Video is to come–I know that with a topic as delicious as rate regulation, no one can wait.

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Posted by Judy Dugan, research director for Consumer Watchdog, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to providing an effective voice for taxpayers and consumers in an era when special interests dominate public discourse, government and politics. Visit us on Facebook and Twitter.

At the National Governors Association, President Obama just threw his weight behind a bi-partisan effort in the US Senate to allow states to innovate with health reform, including adopting a public insurance system or single payer health care system by 2013 instead of 2017.

At the National Governors Association, President Obama just threw his weight behind a bi-partisan effort in the US Senate to allow states to innovate with health reform, including adopting a public insurance system or single payer health care system by 2013 instead of 2017.

The governors embraced the state innovations waiver proposal, since conservative states want to weed back the federal health reform and states like California might like to push ahead with public insurance options or single payer health care systems.

The idea is to let states meet federal targets anyway they want to, rather than how the federal government prescribes, by 2013 rather than the current 2017 deadline.

This is one of Obama’s only moves left, and a smart one. It gives progressive reformers in California and elsewhere the ability to move forward on ambitious reform plans that can pass at the ballot box in 24 states but would never get the time of day in Washington.

Facing strong legal challenges to the individual mandate, Obama did the right thing by offering flexibility to states to meet targets for access and benefits in the Affordable Care Act.  He took a page from longtime labor leader Joe Hill: “Don’t Mourn, Organize.” He’s giving those of us who favor a public insurance option to the private insurance market an opportunity to move our states forward. We better take Joe Hill’s advice too and start organizing.

In my book The Progressive’s Guide To Raising Hell, I point out how the initiative process in 24 states and the District of Columbia are the best hope to get the type of health insurance reform that Obama promised in 2008.  Today’s announcement, if Republicans in Congress bite, lets us act on ambitious reform via ballot measure before 2014, the date mandatory insurance is set to take effect.  Game on.

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Posted by Jamie Court, author of The Progressive’s Guide to Raising Hell and President of Consumer Watchdog, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to providing an effective voice for taxpayers and consumers in an era when special interests dominate public discourse, government and politics. Visit us on Facebook and Twitter.

The largely peaceful revolution in Cairo and Americans’ celebration of it raises the question:

What would it take to mount a peaceful revolution in America against the Wall Street and corporate powerhouses that have turned the government against the best interests of our people?”

The largely peaceful revolution in Cairo and Americans’ celebration of it raises the question:

What would it take to mount a peaceful revolution in America against the Wall Street and corporate powerhouses that have turned the government against the best interests of our people?”

In America, the corporation is king and the abuses of corporate power are the subject of our people’s greatest grievances.

The 2008 election was supposed to settle the score with Wall Street and the corporate elite that have ransomed, ransacked and run over the average American. The change never came, and it’s even less likely in 2012.

At Consumer Watchdog we build populist revolutions one spark at a time where the public has spoken but the rich and powerful won’t listen. While our work cannot compare to the heroism of the Egyptian people, we are inspired by their example.

The revolution in Cairo showed the power of online platforms like Twitter and Facebook to authentically air outrage and connect change makers. In Washington, DC, Consumer Watchdog is fighting to protect individuals’ freedom online, which is being threatened in the name of greater profit, by some of the very corporate innovators that created these platforms.

On Friday, the “Do Not Track Me Online” revolution began with the introduction of legislation by Congressional Rep. Jackie Speier (HR 654) to force corporations to respect our right to keep personal information and online habits private. You can weigh in with your Congressional Representative to pass the legislation here.

Our freedom to be revolutionaries in America depends on how well we can maintain the online commons as free, open, and in the service of the individual, and our privacy needs, rather than the corporation and its commercial needs.  This is an American battlefield that begins with online privacy, the right not to tracked online, extends to net neutrality and evolves to the greater notion that online technology should be in the service of individuals not corporate robots (in spirit of the teaching of Jaron Lanier’s You Are Not A Gadget.

If there is a nonpartisan street revolt brewing in America today it is against the staggering health insurance premium increases that insurance companies are foisting on Americans.  I was in the streets against Blue Shield’s 59% rate hike two weeks ago with angry patients and the California Nurses Association. Blue Shield actually agreed to delay the hike when we showed up.

Consistent premium hikes and the pending mandatory health insurance law to take effect in 2014 are bound to continue a growing rebellion.

Health insurance companies like Blue Shield and Anthem Blue Cross thumb their noses at our democracy daily.  They hijacked health reform to give themselves a guaranteed market, even as they fight daily to erode the consumer protections in the new federal law. Consumer Watchdog is working with regulators to force the health insurance companies to live by the new rules and with California legislators for “Do Not Gouge Me” legislation — giving government the right to stop unnecessary premium hikes. (You can weigh in for AB 52, if you have not already, here. )

Ultimately, the 24 states with ballot initiative processes will be a vehicle to get the people what Congress will not deliver – a public insurance alternative to the private market. Consumer Watchdog is already drafting such a ballot measure for California.

What happens after a revolt is as important as the uprising itself. Insurance companies like Mercury Insurance, Allstate and Farmers have been fighting for two decades against the ballot box revolution of insurance reform Proposition 103. Consumer Watchdog’s lawyers fight back daily to protect and further that voter revolt, which has saved motorists $62 billion on their auto insurance, and to show that even the biggest and most powerful companies have to respect the people’s will.

Revolutions in America today take place in the corporate suites, not the streets.  CEOs are generally the ones deposed, not presidents, which is the first clue to who really holds the power in our nation… But if a governmental revolution were to come, how would it unfold?

Bob Herbert in his New York Times column Saturday artfully makes the case  of the price we have paid for the sins of Wall Street and self-serving interest of those at the very top of the economy.  America will never be the same, nor will our schools, parks, colleges, social programs and deficit, without a major re-rewrite of how our government works to divorce it from the state of corporate capture that is its numbing existence.

Elections are not tools of revolutions in America anymore. What will it take to get Americans in the streets?  

Higher prices for everything coming with growing inflation, higher unemployment,  no jobs for our youth, the closing down of public services and public assistance?

The powerful in America have too much to lose and usually buckle when they smell the whiff of a revolution. That’s why it’s worth putting that smell in the air and in the streets again when the moment calls for it.

Dramatic changes in ideas and practices are the results of long, hard marches toward freedom and accountability. We need to start marching together in America again.

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Posted by Jamie Court, author of The Progressive’s Guide to Raising Hell and President of Consumer Watchdog, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to providing an effective voice for taxpayers and consumers in an era when special interests dominate public discourse, government and politics. Visit us on Facebook and Twitter.

Americans correctly believe that the most critical issue facing our nation is job creation. You would think the Republican-run House of Representatives, in its first major policy vote of the 112th Congress, would be focused on putting Americans to work. Instead, House Republicans have decided their number one priority is repealing the Patient’s Bill of Rights, legislation that is creating 250,000 to 400,000 jobs a year.

The Republican repeal would return America to the dark days when insurance companies told patients and doctors what treatments to pursue, a time when insurers routinely discriminated against Americans to maximize their profits.

When Democrats in Congress passed health care reform – the Patient’s Bill of Rights – last year, we put a stop to the worst abuses of the insurance industry. We told the insurance companies they can no longer drop coverage for women who become pregnant or get cancer. We told the insurance companies they can no longer deny care to children with pre-existing conditions, and by 2014, no American will be turned away from insurance because they have the misfortune of falling ill. We told the insurance companies they must allow young people under the age of 26 to be covered under their parents’ plan. We’ve replaced the Insurance Industry’s Right to Discriminate with the Patient’s Bill of Rights.

I’ve known women denied coverage after a pregnancy, cancer victims kicked off their insurance after their diagnoses, and parents terrified to seek better employment out of fear that losing their employer-provided coverage would put their child with asthma in danger. Many of my proudest moments as a public servant have been spent fighting these insurance companies on behalf of California consumers, particularly as California’s Insurance Commissioner.

Today, if you are in the market for new insurance, because of the Patient’s Bill of Rights, you are now protected by the strongest consumer protections that have ever existed in America – and the system is now improving with every passing year.

Republicans in the House tell us this debate isn’t just about ‘repeal’. They say they want to ‘repeal and replace’ health care reform, yet they’ve offered no serious alternatives. During the years they controlled Congress and the White House from 2000-2006, Republicans offered no solutions to the health care crisis. For years they told us they’d get around to fixing health care later. Later is now, and we still see no real solutions from their side of the aisle.

The Patient’s Bill of Rights has already lowered the prescription drug costs of seniors, and in less than a decade, we’re completely closing the dreaded Medicare Part D prescription drug ‘donut hole’. One in every five seniors is in the donut hole. What is the Republican solution?

The Patient’s Bill of Rights ends annual and lifetime limits on coverage. This doesn’t much matter for a Member of Congress with gold plated coverage, but if you’re struggling to make ends meet at a low paying service sector job – say at McDonald’s – knowing that your insurer can’t cut you off once your medical expenses exceed $2,000 can bring a Super Sized sense of relief. What is the Republican solution?

Indeed, by 2014, every American will have access to the same coverage that a Member of Congress already enjoys. We’re able to do all of this while simultaneously lowering the deficit by $230 billion over the next decade, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. How does it make sense to add hundreds of billions of dollars to the deficit while denying you access to vital consumer protections?

At the end of the day, House Republicans had their vote to repeal the Patient’s Bill of Rights, but we all know that neither the Senate nor the President have any intention of repealing health care reform. We’ve had our debate on ‘repeal and replace’. Let’s move on to the health care discussion that really matters: how best to ‘implement and improve’ the tough consumer protections found in the Patient’s Bill of Rights.

Congressman John Garamendi (D-Walnut Creek, CA) served as California’s Insurance Commissioner for eight years. In the early 1990s, he authored health care legislation in California that would have insured almost every Californian. The legislation was a key inspiration to President Clinton’s health care framework.