As health costs keep rising, Obama is right to try again -- Boston Globe

[discocrisco01]

FOR ALL the Republican rhetoric criticizing health reform as a government takeover of health care, the House and Senate bills really went out of their way to keep the free market in play. The plan President Obama unveiled yesterday does enhance government’s power - by giving it authority to deny excessive premium increases by insurers.


Obama’s proposal to create a seven-member rate authority to review premiums is sure to anger insurers, but until a wider health reform can be enacted, the proposed board would provide needed protection against unconscionable rate increases.

Politically, the new proposal puts Obama and the Democrats on the side of the consumer and against insurers, at a time when some annual rate increases are approaching 40 percent and the five largest providers alone reported $12.2 billion in profits last year. Obama can now dare congressional Republicans to defend the insurers when they all meet for their health summit Thursday.

The rate increases in the non-group insurance market - such as the 39 percent sought by California’s Anthem Blue Cross - would be nowhere near as steep if health reform were already in place. The bills already passed by the House and Senate seek to bring down costs by rewriting the rules of the marketplace. An individual mandate would force everyone, including the young and healthy, to get coverage, expanding the pool and lowering average rates. The insurance-purchase exchanges in the bill would allow consumers to comparison-shop among insurers, who would be forced to plow most of their revenues into health care, and not into dividends or executives’ salaries. The reform plan’s tax on Cadillac health plans would discourage policies that lead to overuse of health services.

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[nightrain]

1. the disease management corporations' rates are already exhorbitant. This

proposal is unlikely to make much difference. The pain is already with us. More tinkering at the edges by people who don't have to deal with the horror on a daily basis.

I think those elected office holders should get Medicaid instead of the benefits they currently get, and reduce their compensation to less than 100K/year.