Wanna be livid? Insurers Seek Presence at Health Care Sessions

[supernova]

WASHINGTON — When supporters of President-elect Barack Obama hold house parties to discuss ways of fixing the health care system over the next two weeks, they may find some unexpected guests.

The health insurance industry is encouraging its employees and satisfied customers to attend. A trade group representing some of the nation’s largest health care businesses, including drug companies, is organizing several meetings. The American Medical Association and other medical societies are encouraging doctors to get involved.

....

The meetings, originally envisioned as a way to make good on Mr. Obama’s commitment to “health care reform that comes from the ground up,” could thus turn into living-room lobbying sessions involving some of the biggest stakeholders in the health care industry.

....

Those who attend are not required to disclose their employers or affiliations. Some Obama advisers have expressed concern that people from the health care industry may try to pack the neighborhood meetings. But Ms. Cutter said they were welcome to attend the gatherings. “These are listening sessions,” Ms. Cutter said. “We are trying to find people who share Obama’s goal of health care reform, even if they disagree on the specifics.”

....

Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for America’s Health Insurance Plans, the main lobby for insurance companies, said the group was “mobilizing our grass-roots coalitions and encouraging industry employees” to participate in meetings for the Obama transition team.

more http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/17/us/politics/17health.html?em


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Has anyone been to any of these meetings? I'm definitely going to find one in my area and see what's up.

[BrklynLiberal]

1. This brings to mind the fundies getting their way by starting at the bottom. First they get their

people elected to local school boards and other local offices. They work their way up to state offices, and eventually to Federal.

These insurance grifters are doing the exact same thing. They are trying to infiltrate the grassroots movement that is trying to get rid of them. This is sabotage. How is this any different than having lobbyists deal with our govt reps, and pleading their case to them?

I would not want any of these insurance company ringers at a meeting that I was attending.

[supernova]

2. I have my doubts that anyone would show themselves at a Chapel Hill meeting

Most around here are of the UHC variety. I could be wrong. But I would expect they'd be laughed right out of the room if they started espousing that bullshit, even without announcing their affiliation.

[Cleita]

3. Should I say I'm not surprised.

The minute Obama named Daschle as his H&HR secretary, I knew the insurance companies were in. They probably even recommended Daschle to Obama. We are f**ked, it seems. You can host a meeting if you are able to. http://change.gov/page/s/hcdiscussion

[cosmik debris]

4. Grass roots activism by interested parties is a bad thing?

Or do you just object to having opposition voices heard?

[Cleita]

5. Corporate insurance operatives are not opposition voices but the

root of the health care problems we are having today.

[cosmik debris]

6. They have a vested interest in this issue

You may not like it, but they have equal rights to be heard.

You can't censor them just because you disagree with them.

[Cleita]

7. They have been heard. Their voice has been out there with their

fancy K street publicists and lawyers for the last forty years. I don't have any objection to them attending meetings. I want them to be wearing their labels though as to whom they exactly represent instead of sneaking around on the sly with their propaganda BS like the "Harry and Louise" ads back in 2000. They were industry propaganda but didn't come out and say who they were, nor the number of articles sprinkled in publications that are pure insurance company lies and disinformation made to appear as if they were studies by experts but many of whose authors I traced back to money and wall street publications.

[cosmik debris]

8. I see,

You are afraid you will be fooled by people who have a different opinion.

I sympathize, but I am able to tell good ideas from bad ideas without requiring people to wear labels. So I don't share your fear.

[Cleita]

9. I can too, but other people are easily swayed by slick willy insurance

peddlers. I want them to say who they represent so I can pull on the knowledge I have stashed away about this issue for years to challenge them. It won't be so easy for them to talk about how awful NHC is in other countries when I make them defend the record the company they represent has accumulated.

[cosmik debris]

10. Ah yes, the maternal instinct.

You seem to feel compelled to protect others from making up their own minds.

Can't you just listen to what they say and present counterarguments without forcing people to wear labels?

Are you going to wear a label saying "Anti-Insurance Lobbyist"?

[Cleita]

11. I would be happy to because I want them to know where I and those who agree with me stand and

I want them to approach me and others who support single payer universal health care first with the propaganda so we can shoot them down where they stand and then we can get down to the real business of getting a workable health plan for all in this country without emptying the coffers for insurance company and wall street profits.

[cosmik debris]

12. Your idea of workable may not work.

Remember the nursing shortage?

One reason we have a nursing shortage is that no one listens to the nurses when THEY tell us how to end the shortage.

We also need to listen to ALL members of the health care supply industry if we don't want to end up with more shortages. Insurance companies are not going to disappear just because you don't like them.

If we don't work with them, things could get a lot worse. For example, the government refused to work with the insurers in Florida, Louisiana, and Texas, and the price of home owner's insurance skyrocketed. When the government capped rates, the insurers quit writing policies so that no one could buy a home or rebuild the ones that had been destroyed.

And by the way, Obama doesn't support single payer universal health care. So you might as well give that up now. It's not going to happen.

[Cleita]

13. Yes, I know Obama doesn't and I hope people like me will get him to look

at the evidence before him of a single player plan that does work and has been working for almost forty years, Medicare, in spite of everything the for profit health care industry and Republican politicians have been doing to try to destroy it and make it ineffective is still able to deliver where other health plans don't and at a far less cost. Destroying Medicare is a goal of the insurance companies so they can step in once Medicare dies. When it dies most of us seniors will also die ahead of our time because, we are too high risk for the insurers so we won't have anything but their watered down senior advantage plans that most doctors wont take anyway. So I hope you are ready to pay for all of grandmas medical bills. He favors the Massachusetts plan that isn't working, and is causing hardship to the people it's supposed to help. It's the one he, Daschle and Kennedy are pushing. Go figure. I don't want insurance companies to go away. In insuring for disaster and catastrophe they are needed, just not in our health care.

[cosmik debris]

14. Have fun tilting at windmills

We elected a pragmatist and we will get a pragmatic health care solution. No groups will be shut out of the process and no change will take place that doesn't get the approval of the House and Senate.

That's the reality that you are up against.

[Cleita]

15. The problem is that his solution is not pragmatic.

Single payer universal health care is not a looney left idea. Having the government take over all of health care and running it like the VA, that is a very leftist idea. Single payer leaves health care in the private sector. Physicians, hospitals and clinics would all be privately run and would compete with each other in a very free market style. The big difference is that every individual will have access to the basic health care that they need regardless of their ability to pay. There is a pooled risk. It's actually how the insurance companies operate with the exception of the 30% administrative costs and being able to cherry pick who they insure. It's really a middle of the road plan and not socialistic at all. Cutting out the cost of having to negotiate a myriad of insurance plans, coverage and forms would be replaced by one form, and one payment plan, a huge savings to physicians and hospitals to begin with. Cutting out the Wall Street profits puts the health care dollars in the hands of those who actually deliver health care. It's really very conservative.

[cosmik debris]

16. The "looney left idea" is that the House and Senate will pass

Single payer universal health care, or that the President would sign it.

Politics is the art of the possible, not the art of making fairy tales come true.

[Cleita]

17. If there is a majority in both houses creating a veto proof majority,

Obama isn't going to be an issue. If he is a true politician, he will bow to the will of Congress just like Clinton did.

[cosmik debris]

18. And that's the fairy tale I was talking about.

You probably can't get a simple majority in both houses and you certainly can't get a veto-proof majority. And there is not a snow ball's chance in hell that single payer universal health care would even get a vote in either house without the support of the President.

Fairy tales, that's all.

[Cleita]

19. Excuse me but history would show that the Republicans gained a majority

after many years of a Democratic majority in both houses. I see no reason that the pendulum won't swing the other way as more and more Americans get fed up with their corrupt politicians from both sides of the aisle. It's already starting to happen. And beware pissing off the fairy folk.;-)

[cosmik debris]

20. I hope you are prepared for a loooooong wait. n/t

[Cleita]

21. It won't be that long. People who once were immune to the Bush assault

on our country, people with jobs and mortgages are losing their entitlement and will be looking at the situation with really fresh eyes over the campfire in front of the tent and card board shack they will be calling home in the near future.

[cosmik debris]

22. The problem with fairy tales is not that they are false,

but that people believe that they are true.

You don't have Pelosi or Reid or Obama on your side, yet you still think it is possible.

[Cleita]

23. I'm pretty sure Pelosi and Reid are going away much sooner than Obama.

Many Congressmen and Senators want them gone and probably it will happen within a year's time. I think Obama will realize he's going down the primrose path too and change his thinking. I posted this in the wrong place cosmik but you know it's for you.

[supernova]

24. Cosmic, your Daniel Downer impersonation is duly noted.

Your pessimism, trying to pass as pragmatism, is short-sighted.

We absolutely do need to have a full and frank discussion about healthcare in this country, which means discussing all options, including insurance reform and a road map to UHC. It is absolutely doable in our life times. And I mean to participate in it. And yes, I will be a very forceful advocate for UHC. It won't happen overnight, but the issue does need to be brought into the open and not just whispered breathlessly on places like DU.

The insurance companies need to be put on notice that they CANNOT be allowed to continue taking in premiums while denying care. Or, on the other side, taking in premiums from doctors for malpractice insurance at extortion rates to make up for their losses in the stock market, all they while scaring the Docs with awful malpractice suit stories. That is flat out unacceptable. Personally, I would be happy to have the insurance cos reduced to selling policies to trophy wives worried about upgrading from Ds to DDs. Yeah, that's about where they belong, too.

These minions sneaking into house meeting like this *without* saying they are their to represent their employers' interests is false advertising of themselves and shows little to no personal integrity. By your posts in this thread, it seems you approve of this behavior. Do you? What reason do you have for defending this unethical practice?

[cosmik debris]

25. That's cosmik with a k n/t

[eridani]

30. How stupid do you have to be to ask for $3000 for your used car if that's your minimum acceptable

--offer? Most people with basic common sense would ask for $5000 or best offer. What is possible is determined by what the public asks for. You ask for the gold standard and compromise down from there. You don't start out with a weak wussy compromise.

[cosmik debris]

32. That strategy worked really well for

Dennis Kucinich.

He asked for impeachment on a dozen different charges and a few of them passed right?.

Oh wait, NONE of them passed. NONE of them even got out of committee.

What is possible is what Reid, Pelosi, and Obama will sign off on, and what the Republican Senators will not filibuster. If you try the Kucinich approach, you will end up with Kucinich results.

[eridani]

34. It's worked great for Rethugs

They just keep demanding what they want, and they get a lot of it. Why can't Dems do the same for policies that are actually popular?

[eridani]

31. Agreed. We were able to make them look like total asses at public meetings last year n/t

[benEzra]

26. I hope the administration goes after retroactive takebacks in a big way.

You know, when your insurer approves and pays for thousands of dollars of ongoing care, and then decides out of the blue months or years later to "un-pay" it and stick the patient with the bill. There is no benefit to that; it harms both providers and patients.

[Cleita]

27. In order for that to happen, you need to get the attention, not only

of the Obama administration but both houses of Congress by writing to them that this is what you want.

[rocktivity]

28. Well, if you run into one of those types, just say

"I'm sure there are good insurance companies, but as long as they're in the business of denying or delaying care in the interests of turning a profit, the health care crisis in this country will continue. We've GOT to come up with something else."

:evilgrin:
rocknation

[eridani]

29. Insurers came to our Healthy Washington sessions this last year

They were outnumbered and really got an earful.

[Crunchy Frog]

33. It'll be interesting to see if some lynchings come out of this.