Information About Health Of Today

Most Americans are aware that buried somewhere in the 2,000-page health care reform bill are provisions for cutting the already- strapped Medicare program by billions of dollars. Few are aware that the bill also cuts expenditures on county hospitals currently serving the poor.

In Chicago, for example, those without health insurance go to the county hospital where they are treated without regard to whether they have health insurance. If the bill is passed, however, many of these county hospitals will either have to close their doors or deny treatment to those without health insurance.

Although the bill passed by the Senate has been depicted as using coercive means to require those currently uninsured to buy insurance they cannot afford, or as imposing additional new taxes on the American working man and family, that bill is based on a fundamental lack of understanding of how the health care needs of the nation’s poor are currently served.
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Health insurers across the country are planning to raise premiums for some of their customers in the coming weeks, the Wall Street Journal reports, and they are in part blaming President Obama’s health care reform package for the rate hikes.

On the surface, at least, the news boosts Republicans’ arguments against the Democrats’ reforms ahead of this year’s midterm elections. But the White House and other supporters of the reform package say they are skeptical of the health insurance companies’ rationale.

Aetna Inc., some BlueCross BlueShield plans and other smaller carriers have asked regulators to approve premium increases of between one percent and nine percent to pay for the bill’s early benefits, the Journal reports. The rate increases would largely apply to individual plans (9 percent of Americans have individual plans) and those offered for small businesses (about 20 percent of Americans get coverage from small employers).

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Millions of Americans went to the polls on Tuesday, feeling anxious about the economy and health care reform, and yielding election results that gave Republicans control of the House of Representatives and weakened the Democratic majority in the Senate. Republicans picked up at least 60 House seats and at least six Senate seats in the election, removing Democrat Nancy Pelosi from her powerful position as speaker of the House and putting Republicans in charge of House leadership and committees.

The Republican sweep extended from coast to coast and removed more than 30 Democratic incumbents from the House of Representatives, including Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton, Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt and Transportation Committee Chairman James Oberstar.

Exit polling shows more than eight in 10 voters feel the economy is the No. 1 issue facing the nation, and three times as many people believe it is getting worse rather than (continue reading…)

Week of March 15, 2010

The White House last week continued to rail against rising health insurance premiums to help build popular support for his health care reform package. But the effort to focus the blame for rising costs on insurers was questioned, in particular, by state insurance experts and economists quoted in a New York Times story last week. Insurance commissioners said that trying to hold down premiums before costs were under control would be very risky. This approach could mean solvency issues in some cases, they told the Times. To help educate Americans about the true drivers of rising health care costs, America’s Health Insurance Plans, the industry trade association, last week launched a new national ad campaign. The ad demonstrates that health insurance company costs represent a small slice of the (continue reading…)