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Calling out the insurance industry in Rhode Island and Ohio |
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On Friday, Health Care for America Now supporters in Ohio and Rhode Island confronted the insurance industry. Braving heavy weather, folks in Rhode Island crashed the insurance industry’s “listening tour:”
Now, as both presidential candidates have put forth proposals for health-care reform and public sentiment leans toward change, the health insurers say they want a different role in the debate –– that of helpful participant rather than opponent. Yesterday, AHIP held a “roundtable discussion†in Providence as the seventh stop in its Campaign for an American Solution, meetings to discuss what citizens want from their health-care system.
And the first thing the “listening tour†encountered was a protest. A group called Health Care for America Now!, comprising unions and other activists, gathered a dozen or so people under umbrellas outside the Foundry building. Their signs and fliers getting soggy in the rain, they denounced the profit-making and high executive salaries of private insurance companies.
“They’re insuring less people and making more money,†said Patrick Quinn, state director of the Service Employees International Union. “They’re part of the problem. They’re not the solution.â€
AHIP’s response was characteristically bad:
One of the participants, Karen Malcolm, executive director of Ocean State Action –– continuing the argument from the street –– said the “elephant in the room†was the administrative costs and high salaries at health-insurance companies. She noted that government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid operate with very low overhead.
Ignagni said that government programs, unlike private insurers, don’t offer such services as care coordination and disease management –– programs that most experts believe the health-care system needs. “It’s quite reasonable,†Ignagni said, “for the public to ask us to demonstrate our value.â€
The only thing private insurance has the public insurance doesn’t is “care coordination and disease management?” That’s a pretty weak case for private insurance, and even so, what’s stopping public insurance from adding these services? It seems the insurance industry is finally admitting public insurance can be just as good as private. If that’s the case, the industry’s attempts to block the creation of a widely available public insurance plan can only be read as a move to preserve their profits.
Health Care for America Now was also out protesting in Ohio on Friday against Anthem:
The Rev. Gregory Chandler, president of the Amos Project, said he wants to know why, if health-care keeps getting costlier, profits for Anthem and other insurers keep going up.
From 2003 to 2007, the group said, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, a subsidiary of Wellpoint Inc., saw earnings rise from $203 million to $420 million.
In 2006, Wellpoint’s chairman of the board, Larry C. Glasscock, earned more than $23.8 million.
“We will request a meeting with Anthem president Erin Hoeflinger to raise our concerns regarding the disconnect between profit-making and providing care to regular people, like Stephanie’s father,” Chandler said. “There are numerous practices that insurance companies seem to engage in to limit actual provision of care and to minimize the number of sick people in their insurance, rendering the least of these the most vulnerable. That doesn’t square with our faith values or our American values. We hope to have a productive conversation about what can be changed.”
And once again, the insurance industry’s response was lackluster:
Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield is committed to all Ohioans having access to affordable, quality health coverage,” said Kim Ashley, spokeswoman for the insurer. “We believe there is a role for both public programs and a private, choice-based system to achieve that goal. Increasing access to care, improving health-care quality, controlling health spending and building on the current private-public system are priorities for Anthem and we believe should be priorities for this country.
Characteristically, the insurance industry wants to “build on the current private-public system” instead of creating a widely available public health care plan it knows will cut its profits. Building on a failed system doesn’t sound like the way forward towards health care for all, it sounds like throwing more money down a hole.
As supports around the country have been demonstrating, people want real health care reform, not platitudes and band-aids from the insurance industry.
