Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Are Americans insane or gullible? We will find out for sure on November 2nd.
When all is added up north of 30% of premiums to insurance companies are used for expenses that are completely non-medical related. Private insurance companies pay executives high salaries, pays shareholders dividends, pay high advertising cost, pays lobbying, pays unnecessary capital expenditures and much more. It is for this reason I have always stated that it is a mathematical fact that a single payer healthcare system would reduce cost to the government and to the individual. Moreover a mandate that forces all citizens to be responsible and have coverage would further reduce cost to the systems as whole as risk/cost is distributed. For those who think this is unconstitutional, simply consider it a tax (which has already passed constitutional muster).
With healthcare reform passed, insurance companies are now making there last gasp at trying to water down the consumer protections and savings by prostituting willing Republicans to reengage in the pilfering of the middleclass. Liberal and Progressive Democrats have ample examples for commercials to detail why we must not go back to the Class Warfare being waged on the middleclass. Will they?
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By Noam N. Levey, Tribune Washington Bureau October 5, 2010
Reporting from Washington —
The insurance industry is pouring money into Republican campaign coffers in hopes of scaling back wide-ranging regulations in the new healthcare law but preserving the mandate that Americans buy coverage.
Since January, the nation’s five largest insurers and the industry’s Washington-based lobbying arm have given three times more money to Republican lawmakers and political action committees than to Democratic politicians and organizations.That is a marked change from 2009, when the industry largely split its political donations between the parties, according to federal election filings.
The largest insurers are also paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to lobbyists with close ties to Republican lawmakers who could shape health policy in January, records show.
"The industry would love to have a Republican Congress," said Wendell Potter, a former executive at Cigna Corp., one of the country’s biggest insurers. "They were very, very successful during the years of Republican domination in Washington."Many Republican leaders have enthusiastically embraced the call to revise the healthcare legislation, vowing to "repeal and replace" the law in the next congressional session. But that call to repeal poses a delicate issue for the budding GOP/insurance industry partnership. The Republican Party thinks it has a winning position in denouncing the unpopular mandate that will require Americans to get health insurance starting in 2014, while insurers and independent healthcare experts see the requirement as crucial to controlling costs for everyone by spreading the risk.
The healthcare law will penalize Americans $95 in 2014 if they fail to get insurance. The penalty rises to $695 in 2016."The one thing that insurance companies would love to see are penalties that are actually stronger," said Jeff Fusile, a partner at consulting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers.
The insurance industry, attracted by the prospect of millions of new customers as a result of the coverage mandate, initially backed President Obama‘s campaign to overhaul the healthcare system. And insurers scored a key victory when Democrats abandoned plans to create a government insurance plan, or "public option."
But insurers are increasingly balking at the myriad new directives in the healthcare law.
Among other things, the law prohibits insurance companies from denying coverage to sick children and canceling policies when customers become ill. The law bars insurers from placing lifetime caps on how much they will pay when their customers get sick.Many consumers will also get new rights to appeal denied claims and win access to preventive care without being asked for co-pays.
Health insurers pour money into GOP campaigns, hoping to limit new regulations – latimes.com