Politico's Vandehai on MSNBC: HIC makes $2 million ad buy 'Not Anymore' to promote healthcare bill

[flpoljunkie]

(Just heard on Morning Joe. Found politico link below confirming the ad buy.)

FIRST IN PULSE: HEALTH INFORMATION CENTER MAKES $2 MILLION AD BUY - The group, helmed by veteran Democratic strategist Andrew Grossman, will go live Wednesday with a national ad campaign centered on the theme “Not Anymore.” “The idea is you don’t have to worry about the stability of your coverage,” communications director Erikka Knuti tells PULSE. “These are all things that you don’t have to be concerned about.” The television spots highlight the insurance reforms coming online September 23, like barring insurers from denying coverage to children under 19 with pre-existing conditions, that they say will make coverage more stable.

--This is the debut for the Health Information Center, a multi-million dollar “education campaign,” lead by top Democratic strategists to “provide resources and information,” on the health reform law, says Knuti. Expect to see more soon: the group will grow to 10-15 employees and launch its website later this week.

By Sarah Kliff (@sarahkliff) and Jennifer Haberkorn (@jenhab)

http://dyn.politico.com/members/forums/thread.cfm?catid=16&subcatid=57&threadid=4473682

[trumad]

1. My healthcare still cost me 10 grand a year...

600 per month with a 4000 deductible.

It's the best my company can offer me and I have no choice.

$10,000.

[flpoljunkie]

7. HHS: $46 Million in Grants to Help States Crack Down on Unreasonable Health Insurance Premium Hikes

(Let's hope this starts to bring down rate increases and soon.)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, August 16, 2010

$46 Million in Grants to Help States Crack Down on Unreasonable Health Insurance Premium Hikes

45 States and the District of Columbia to Receive $1 Million Each to Make Health Insurance Markets More Consumer-Friendly and Transparent

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today announced grant awards of $46 million to 45 States and the District of Columbia. These Affordable Care Act grants will be used to help improve the oversight of proposed health insurance premium increases, take action against insurers seeking unreasonable rate hikes, and ensure consumers receive value for their premium dollars.

For too long, insurance companies in many States have increased health insurance premiums with little oversight, transparency, or public accountability. Health insurance premiums have doubled on average during the last 10 years, much faster than wages and inflation, putting health coverage out of reach for millions of Americans and business owners. Today, just 26 States and the District of Columbia have the authority to reject a proposed increase that is excessive, lacks justification or otherwise exceeds State standards. Many States that have the authority lack resources to exercise it meaningfully. This lack of authority and resources for States has unfortunately contributed to unjustified premium increases in some States.

“The Affordable Care Act puts in place critical market reforms to improve quality and reduce the cost of health care for employers and individuals. Increased competition, lower insurance overhead, and better risk pooling in health insurance Exchanges in 2014 are expected to reduce premiums in the individual market by anywhere from 14-20 percent according to the Congressional Budget Office,” said Secretary Sebelius. “Between now and then, we will continue to work with States to ensure consumers are receiving value for their premium dollars and to avoid the kind of double digit premium increases seen recently. The State proposals approved today demonstrate the need and desire for new resources and tools to help them protect against unjustifiable premium increases.”

The Affordable Care Act provides States with $250 million in Health Insurance Premium Review Grants over five years to help create a more level playing field by improving how States review proposed health insurance premium increases and holding insurance companies accountable for unjustified premiums increases. Applications for the first round of Health Insurance Premium Review Grants were made available on June 7.

The grants build on the Obama Administration’s work with States to implement the Affordable Care Act. Earlier this year, Secretary Sebelius called on certain insurance companies to justify large premium increases and encouraged State and local officials to obtain stronger health insurance premium review authorities under State laws. This increased scrutiny by the Administration and by several States has led to the withdrawal or reduction of several proposed health insurance premium increases that in some cases turned out to be based on faulty assumptions and data.

States have proposed to use this funding in a variety of ways.

Additional Legislative Authority: 15 States and the District of Columbia will pursue additional legislative authority to create a more robust program for reviewing or requiring advanced approval of proposed health insurance premium increases to ensure that they are reasonable;

Expand the Scope of Health Insurance Premium Review: 21 States and the District of Columbia will expand the scope of their current health insurance review, for example by reviewing and requiring pre-approval of rate increases for additional health insurance products in their State.

Improve the Health Insurance Premium Review Process: All 46 State grantees will require insurance companies to report more extensive information through a new, standardized process to better evaluate proposed premium increases and increase transparency across the marketplace;

Make More Information Publicly Available: 42 States and the District of Columbia will increase the transparency of the health insurance premium review process and provide easy-to-understand, consumer friendly information to the public about changes to their premiums; and

Develop and Upgrade Technology: All State grantees will develop and upgrade existing technology to streamline data sharing and put information in the hands of consumers more quickly.
“States will use these grant dollars in the way that makes the most sense for their insurance consumers,” said Jay Angoff, Director of the Office of Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight. “As we continue to implement the new health insurance reform law, we will continue to work with States to ensure they have the tools they need to ensure the stability of the marketplace, keep costs low and provide consumers with increased transparency, choice and quality they need to make the best health care decisions for their businesses and families.”

A chart summarizing how each State will use the new resources can be found at http://www.healthcare.gov/news/factsheets/rateschart.html.

The Health Insurance Premium Review Grants are one element of a broad effort under the Affordable Care Act to reduce the unreasonable premium increases proposed by some insurers today. Additional resources from this $250 million program will be available in subsequent years to further strengthen State health insurance premium review procedures. Other statutory provisions designed to improve affordability include:

In 2011, the Affordable Care Act allows the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to review justifications for unreasonable increases in premiums and make them public;

In 2011, insurers will generally be required to spend at least 80 percent of premium dollars on medical care services and quality-improvement activities and limit their spending on overhead, marketing, CEO salaries, and profits; and

In 2014, the Affordable Care Act empowers States to exclude health plans that show a pattern of excessive or unjustified premium increases from the new health insurance Exchanges.

The Affordable Care Act includes a wide variety of provisions designed to promote a high-quality, high-value, health care system for all Americans and to make the health insurance market more consumer-friendly and transparent. Some of the provisions that take effect by the end of next year, or are already in effect, include prohibitions on pre-existing condition exclusions for children; prohibition on lifetime dollar limits in all health plans; extended access to insurance for many young adults; and an unprecedented level of transparency about health insurance through www.HealthCare.gov.

To read more about the grants, visit http://www.healthcare.gov/news/factsheets/rates.html.

To read more about how each State will use its grant funding, visit http://www.healthcare.gov/center/grants/index.html.

[Vinca]

2. There are some good things in the bill, no doubt, but they forgot one important thing.

The people who now can have their child with the pre-existing condition covered will need to come up with big bucks for the policy. The coverage doesn't magically happen. Just like the pre-existing condition pool. Sounds great until you get a quote and that's why so few people can take advantage of it. If they don't go back to the drawing board and rein in big insurance - at the very least - the 2014 elections will be a whole lot scarier than this year's election.

[zipplewrath]

3. Rein in health CARE

You won't be able to control the cost of health insurance until you control the cost of health care. For all the myths around the cost of health insurance, the biggest is that the problem is the insurance companies. They are no saints, but ultimately they were stuck trying to make a profit in an industry that is pricing itself right out of the market. The cost of health care has been inflating above the general rate of inflation for several decades. And it hasn't really changed. HMO's were suppose to get control of the costs, and failed. "Managed care" in general has failed to control the rate of inflation. PPO's, primary care, all that stuff was intended to "manage" the cost of health care, and it basically has all failed. All it achieved was lowering the quality of our health care, without substantially slowing the rate of inflation.

The insurance companies ultimately figured out that the path to profits was in DENYING care, either by not insuring the sick, or by denying care to the sick. So you got all the strategies that HCR tried to outlaw. Pre-existing conditions, canceling policies once you actually did get sick, life time payout limits, annual pay out limits, and all those other pesky features. But none of this addresses the underlying problem that health CARE is getting more expensive every year and more and more folks are not able to afford it, even WITH insurance.

They can run all the ads they want, and it may even help them win some elections here and there. But in 10 years we'll abll be talking about HCR the way we talk about NAFTA and DADT. And someone, possibly a republican, will get elected on the message of "fixing" it.

[Vinca]

9. The insurance companies caused the rise in the cost of health care.

The provider tells them the fee and big insurance tells the provider what percentage they'll pay . . . take it or leave it. Next time around the provider has upped his price so when he gets the agreed upon percentage it's in line with the original charge. And so it goes. Year after year after year. The people who get super screwed are the uninsured who are billed 100% of the inflated price. What we need is governmental regulation of costs, just like we have for utilities.

[zipplewrath]

10. Not even close

The insurance companies have created "networks" of providers with whom they negotiate rates. It has been tried a variety of way, PPO's, "managed care", HMO's, etc. At the end of the day, the problem has been that the insurance companies haven't been able to "control" health care costs. And they have stopped trying. Mostly they were merely trying to ration what care people received, and to eliminate the sick as customers.

We need to get away from the "pay for service" model. But that is VERY hard to do with a multi-level system like we have.

[Vinca]

12. I don't think health insurance companies have ever had an interest

in cost control. They've got consumers (fka patients) to themselves and they can charge whatever they want to make sure they get their projected profit. Why should they spend extra money on working to control something that only matters to the poor slobs who can't afford to buy their "product?"

[zipplewrath]

13. that's how you sell group plans

A not so insignificant portion of the market is in large group plans. Large employers are "self insured", which means that they pay the actual costs of the health care. They just hire insurance companies to "manage" the costs. i.e. do the billing and paying. They "win" those contracts by controlling the costs to the companies. When health care really turned into a commercial, for profit, industry, there was a thought that profit was achieved by controlling costs. It is what really started the HMO movement. It didn't work. Oh, they wrung some costs out of the system, but it didn't really work all that well.

It is one of the true sicknesses of our system. Grayson was only partially kidding about the "die quickly" approach. The reality is that finding and detecting disease early really doesn't save anyone any money. It just runs up the bill, because you don't die. It is much better for the guy paying the bill if you don't get any health care until it's too late. HMO's and managed care were based upon the "early detection" assumption. You could lower costs if you detected disease early. Unfortunately what they found out was that all that does is keep you healthy, so you can get ANOTHER disease they have to treat. Worse, they find "chronic" conditions that require continuous treatment. For the guy paying the bills They'd rather not know you have high blood pressure until you actually die of it.

[mopinko]

6. as the parent of a kid with a chronic disease, if i had to choose

between eating and keeping my kid insured, i would be eating the mcvalue meal 3 times a day. my kid has cost our insurance company about $30k this year, and it was a pretty good year for her. even if it was even money, choosing between mortgaging the house, and going to the er is just not something you want to have go through your mind, ever.

[Vinca]

8. I realize that, but some people have nothing to mortgage.

It's sad we cannot give American parents the same peace of mind Canadian parents have.

[eridani]

4. Waste of money and time. The real problem is needing such a campaign

--in the first place because the benefits are close to invisible, as they affect very few people. Everyone else sees things getting much worse with vastly more expensive insurance that covers less and less.

If we were stuck with an incremental approach, lowering the Medicare eligility age would have had a far more visible impact. You wouldn't have to sell laundry lists because everyone would know someone who benefitted.

[flpoljunkie]

5. Even longtime healthcare advocate Ted Kennedy realized Congress would never pass Medicare for All.

We need a Congress less beholden to special interests--if we are ever to get Medicare for All. if Bernie Sanders can support and vote for the healthcare bill, I can support it.

The Fair Elections Now Act would go a long way toward that, but will it even come up for a vote before the end of the year?

[zipplewrath]

11. Not in a single step

It was what all the hullaballoo about the Public option was about. Everyone knew, especially the insurance companies, that the public option would slowly "morph" into effectively "single payer".

[eridani]

14. Joe Lieberman was for lowering the Medicare age before he was against it

If not Medicare for All, why not Medicare for a Few More? The political problem with the bill is that its benefits (while real) are not VISIBLE. Lowering the Medicare eligibility age would have been hugely visible, thus not requiring a laundry list sales job.