rssThe Return of Harry and Louise?
Wednesday, August 05, 2009 at 12:26 pm
- 4 Comments
When the talk of health care reform was generic — and therefore unthreatening — the insurance lobby joined a number of other powerful voices in the health care industry to announce its support. But with the Democrats pushing ever-harder to ensure the inclusion of a public plan option, the push-back is beginning to emerge. From The Hill:
[S]trong anti-insurer rhetoric from Democrats struggling to win over a skeptical public could wake the sleeping giant.
Karen Ignagni, the president and CEO of the trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), said the industry would take its case directly to the American public via a television advertising campaign and by dispatching insurance company employees to public events staged by Democratic members of Congress during the August recess. [...]
“A campaign has been launched to demonize health plans and the men and women who work hard every day in their communities to provide health insurance coverage to more than 200 million Americans,” she said on a conference call with reporters.
Famously, the insurance industry helped to kill the Clinton administration’s 1993 health reform push, running a wildly effective ad claiming that the Clinton plan would steal the rights of patients to choose their own health care plans — the same argument the industry is using now to battle the public option proposal.
Ignagni said she’s not trying to cripple the Democrats’ health reform plans, The Hill reported. But if the Democrats come up with a strong public plan option, as many want, you can bet that AHIP’s strategy will quickly change.
4 Comments
Pingback posted August 5, 2009 @ 5:33 pm
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Comment posted August 5, 2009 @ 5:41 pm
I've been seeing the ads for the past month or two. It must be a pretty big ad buy because I'm seeing them on cable networks that aren't completely insane…
Comment posted August 7, 2009 @ 1:52 am
President Obama may fail over Health care, because the Democrat leadership of Sen Harry Reid, Speaker Pelosi added these services free-of-charge to the 20 million plus illegal immigrants and their families. The cost is trillions of dollars according to Robert Rector, top analyst of the Heritage Foundation. All these money will be further accentuated by the cornucopia of other welfare entitlements, that will keep attracting millions more illegal aliens. These mandatory federal laws are enforced on taxpayers by the IRS, which has drained state, county treasuries for absolute decades. America cannot have a government run health care system, until restrictions are placed on anybody who are unable to prove their citizenship status or residency. Like Europe, America has been invaded by mass hordes of legal and illegal immigrants, with consequences of a overburdened government health care system.
Comment posted August 7, 2009 @ 11:08 am
According to the scoring of CBO on the prevention & wellness program, all fitness centers around the world should close down immediately and all media have to end reporting health tips about prevention.
Immune System & Levee System :
All of the excellent health systems seem to have one thing in common, a expansive, systematic preventative program requiring immense investments. I think a prevention system works as a 'levee' built against flood by the government, similarly, it also needs non-profit investments from the government 'on a large scale'.
This might offer us the clue of why all of the free states have public insurance policy in place.
It won't be easy to draw some specific numbers on the economic effect of the 'levee' , but the flood measure lacking a stable 'levee' would be a house on sand, as the too high level of 'preventable' chronic diseases in America shows.
At present, about 75 percent of each health dollar goes to treating chronic conditions.
When tests reveal patients are at risk of a chronic disease, physicians have no benefit to help them make necessary changes to stay healthy. Rather, the system today is designed around treating patients once they become sick.
If current health care system could shift a small percentage of total spending into programs that help prevent people from getting sick in the first place, it would dramatically reduce the overall cost of care.
Thankfully, the health care reform bill currently before Congress makes several key investments in preventive care, and those pieces of the PUBLIC OPTION must be maintained.
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”, said Benjamin Franklin , and 'Early Detection' goes beyond monetary value as we see the recent case.
As far as I'm concerned, the congress affected by the special interests has impeded the budget request for prevention program in Medicare & Medicaid. Let's imagine the costs and invaluable lives following the levee breach.
Time is ripe for CHANGE !
Thank You !
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