Durbin to insurance companies: 'Party's over'

[mucifer]

March 7, 2010 3:13 PM | from the chicago tribune

Small businesses and ordinary citizens are suffering under the crushing increases in health insurance premiums, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said today at a press conference with Chicago-area business owners and residents meant to underscore the need for healthcare reform.

Durbin said that health insurance premiums could increase up to 60 percent in Illinois this year. Meanwhile, he said, insurance companies are experiencing some of their highests profits in history.

"The outrageous premium prices which they have been pushing on the American people in order to drive up their profits are unacceptable and unfair," Durbin said. "We're going to start watching them more closely, requiring them to spend a higher percentage of premiums going for actual medical care. The party's over."

He said the plan is to send President Obama a healthcare reform package in a matter of weeks.

"First we're going to end their anti-trust exemption," Durbin said. "Currently, they can literally collude and conspire to fix prices. It's legal. It's legal. And it's been that way for over 60 years. We're going to change that."...

http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/03/durbin-to-insurance-companies-the-partys-over.html




I like getting rid of the anti-trust exemption.
flame away guys. I know you will.

[Ozymanithrax]

1. Getting rid of the anti-trust exemption is one of the real cost control measures.

Make every company operate in every state, and you begin using real free market ideas to control prices. As long as they can set up state sanctioned monopolies they do not have to compete.

Now, I don't think that abolishing the anti-trust exemptions is enough. But it is a good idea and necessary to even begin to control costs to consumers.

[sabrina 1]

2. Well, if he's serious he will not vote for a bill that does not have a PO.

Premiums will continue to go up every year if the Senate Bill passes the way it is, just as they have in Mass. under the smaller version of that bill.

I thought the anti-trust clause was in the bill already. I guess the Ins. Cos. lobbied to have it removed.

We don't need these greedy middle-men in our healthcare system. They are, aside from being corrupt and the direct cause of many deaths in what can only be called 'criminally negligent homocide', not necessary and are way to costly in every sense of the word.

Whenever I explain to people what their role is and how it would be without them, even Republicans can be persuaded to go to a Medicare for All system. A tax that is half what your insurance premium is with guaranteed coverage when you are sick doesn't sound so bad even to the anti-tax Republicans I know.!

Medicare overhead costs = approx 3%
Private Ins. overhead costs = approx 22%

Middlemen are costly, they need to make a profit. We don't need them, they are extraneous. Profit based healthcare is immoral. It discriminates regarding who lives and who dies. It is anti democratic. Other countries get this, why don't Americans?

And what happened to YES WE CAN? All I hear now is NO WE CAN'T!

We COULD, if the majority party wanted it. But they don't.

[Uncle Joe]

3. Not only should the party be over for for profit "health" insurance corporations, they

should be told to get the fuck out and get a real job.

They contribute absolutely nothing to health care and the very nature of a for profit dynamic; can only serve to leech precious monies, time, energy and resources away from the noble industry of health care and in turn every other industry as well, except for possibly the funeral industry.

The idea of a for profit "health" insurance casino industry to exist is immoral, repugnant and I believe totally at odds with the spirit of the U.S. Constitution Preamble.

Quit screwing around and pass the most logical. efficient, economical and moral policy by expanding Medicare to cover every American from the cradle to the grave either all at once or rapidly phase it in.

Thanks for the thread, mucifer.

[sabrina 1]

4. Very well said ~ n/t

[Skittles]

5. except, the party is NOT over

and he damn well knows it

[Smashcut]

6. He's right. Now it's time for the afterparty!!!

:party: