Obama’s mad about insurers blaming his health care plan for big rate hikes, but he doesn’t have to take it anymore. He can and should issue an executive order to stop the rate hikes immediately.Obama’s mad about insurers blaming his health care plan for big rate hikes, but he doesn’t have to take it anymore. He can and should issue an executive order to stop the rate hikes immediately.

Obama’s mad about insurers blaming his health care plan for big rate hikes, but he doesn’t have to take it anymore. He can and should issue an executive order to stop the rate hikes immediately.Obama’s mad about insurers blaming his health care plan for big rate hikes, but he doesn’t have to take it anymore. He can and should issue an executive order to stop the rate hikes immediately.

A Blue Cross policyholder emailed me last night about her recent 20 percent rate hike. She’s now being pushed into a policy that costs much more and comes with a $7500 deductible. Her insurer’s response: blame the president and his “10,000 page legislation.”

That’s electioneering in my book. The President needs to fire back and protect customers as well as the integrity of his patient protection act. This is the type of out-of-the-box thinking that Americans expect from their President–and he has yet to deliver.

Today, Consumer Watchdog wrote the President asking that he freeze health insurance premiums to protect consumers from unjustified and unreasonable increases until new rules requiring public justification of unreasonable premium hikes take effect later this year.

The Supreme Court has held that a President may issue an Executive Order where the President has been expressly or implicitly authorized to act by the Constitution or Congress. Under the federal health reform law, Congress expressly provided that, beginning with the 2010 plan year, health insurance companies cannot raise insurance premiums until insurers “submit to the Secretary and the relevant State a justification for an unreasonable premium increase prior to the implementation of the increase.”

Here’s the reasoning behind the executive order: HHS is working to finalize regulations by the end of 2010 defining an “unreasonable premium increase.” It’s not yet possible for regulators to determine which premium increases require a justification from insurers. So an Executive Order freezing premium increases until insurers have justified increases deemed unreasonable is necessary to implement the express requirements of the federal law.  

There is precedent for the success of such a freeze. In California in 1988, Proposition 103 enacted the nation’s strongest prior approval system for property and casualty rate regulation. California’s insurance commissioner ordered a freeze on all rates until implementing regulations were enacted, and insurers complied. Despite claims that the freeze and new regulation would drive insurers out of the state, or out of business, the state’s auto insurance market is the 4th most competitive in the nation and stayed profitable, while auto insurance premiums rose at the slowest rate in the nation, according to a 2008 analysis by the Consumer Federation of America.

An Executive Order establishing the premium freeze could be written so that it ends when those regulations become effective, thus allowing premium increases to go into effect only after unreasonable increases are justified by insurers as intended by Congress.

Will Obama get tough on insurers? He has the power, now he just needs the presidential will.

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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.

I’ve been in our nation’s capital this week meeting with Obama Administration officials and Congressional leaders about national health care reform. Everywhere I go, from the White House to the Department of Labor to the U.S. Senate, I get the same question: can San Francisco’s universal health care program, Healthy San Francisco, be scaled?

The answer is yes.  

Truly, one of the strongest aspects of Healthy San Francisco (HSF) is its simplicity. The program allows participants to select their primary care provider from among dozens of local hospitals and clinics, both public and private. Our local system does not require lengthy HMO paperwork and there is no denial of treatment based on pre-existing medical conditions.

A recent study showed that Healthy San Francisco is dramatically less expensive than traditional insurance. And our experience in San Francisco is proving what most American’s already know – it is much less expensive to keep people well than it is to treat their sickness, particularly when so much treatment for uninsured Americans is provided in costly emergency rooms.

There are currently more than 40,000 participants in HSF. We are enrolling approximately 600 new participants every week. We have already enrolled more than half of the previously uninsured San Franciscans and the vast majority will have access to health care by the end of next year.

I believe that administration and congressional leaders understand that we cannot wait for health care reform. Our health care crisis affects every aspect of our society – from making sure every child receives the health care they need to succeed in school, to decreasing the financial burden on business, both large and small, so our economy can get back on track.

I know there is pressure in Washington to wait until the economy improves before we act on health care reform. I faced many of the same pressures when I was working with allies in San Francisco to forge our universal health care delivery system.

But “waiting” in politics usually means never – and we simply cannot afford to wait any longer. The lessons we are learning in San Francisco shows that investing in health and wellness is its own kind of economic stimulus.

The time is now to tackle this problem and I applaud President Obama for promising to sign a national health care reform bill by October. We cannot wait for change – the President needs your help. Sign the petition to support President Obama’s call for health care reform.

One of the key figures leading the charge in Congress is Iowa Senator Tom Harkin. I spoke with Sen. Harkin on my Green 960 radio show this week about the challenges Congress and the administration face and the possibility of using HSF as a model for a national program. You can listen to the show online or via iTunes.

For my part, I was recently made Chair of the U.S. Conference of Mayors Task Force on Health Care Reform. Cities often have the most pressing health care needs and have had to adapt and innovate in lieu of national health care reform. I am looking forward to working with my fellow Mayor’s to hear what they have learned in their cities and share what we’ve learned in my hometown through Healthy San Francisco.

In the end, the task force will identify urban health care priorities and advise the work of Congress and the Administration to help solve this crucial challenge we all share. As always, please feel free to give me your input and feedback in the comments section below.

Listen to Mayor Newsom’s Green 960 radio show online or subscribe to his weekly policy discussions on iTunes.  Join Mayor Newsom on Facebook. You can also follow him on Twitter.