When I announced my support for a full repeal of the health insurance industry’s anti-trust exemption yesterday, I was thinking of three things: regulatory fairness, consumer protection and the economy. If we’re going to fix the problems in our health care industry, we need a policy that adequately addresses all three.
Repealing the exemption is fair because, frankly, the status quo is unfair. Members of most American industries are forbidden to fix prices, create de facto local monopolies or divvy up the country in ways that hurt consumers. We need to make sure health insurance is subject to these same unobjectionable regulations.
The policy I support protects consumers by giving the Federal Trade Commission the power to investigate alleged wrongdoing by insurance providers and, if necessary, to sanction guilty parties. Health insurance companies today argue that state anti-trust laws are enough to keep them honest. In fact, few industries enjoy such lax oversight. With many states seeing major budgetary shortfalls, who believes there’s enough regulatory authority at the state level to truly protect consumers? Giving the FTC the support it needs, and should have had in the first place, is the best way to guard against future predatory business practices.
Tightening up these regulations will help the economy by cutting overall health care expenses. When people – for instance, in rural areas – are denied coverage by the only insurer within 50 miles, they don’t just sit at home hoping to get well. They go to the emergency room, and that costs everyone money. We need to make sure insurers play by the rules because we’ve seen what happens to health care costs when they don’t.
The exemption granted in the 1945 McCarran-Ferguson Act was only intended to last until lawmakers addressed the issue more comprehensively. Let’s eliminate it now and tell the government to treat health insurance the way it treats the rest of the economy.
"We have nothing to hide," says the fox to the farmer. Yah, American citizens should just "trust" that the healthcare industry is not ripping us off.
"Building a house of health" by Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash), The Hill
President Obama is trying to bring about the largest change in social policy in more than 75 years. To do that, he has to get consensus among 300 million Americans who fall into two basic categories: those worried that change will not go far enough, and those worried they will be worse off when the process is done.
The President tried to allay the fears of those who already have health insurance by assuring them that they could stay where they were. At the same time he promised to create a health insurance system for all 300 million. It would be as though you were living in a house and the president came and said he was going to build a new one that would house everyone on your block, perhaps even you.
The President is trying to build a house of health in which all Americans can live without fear of losing their coverage or being threatened by bankruptcy. In the process of building this house he is promising the American people that it will be a better place to live and will not cost more than it presently does.
Congress has shaped the president's vision into legislation that includes major provisions like a public option, prevention and wellness, increased competition and assistance for small business. Together, the president and the Congress have started to pour the foundation and build the structural supports. Much of the argument that is going on today is over the details of what the house will look like, what will be included, and at what cost.
From the beginning, the President clearly understood that not every detail could be worked out before construction started. This house of health is a work in progress that will be created over the next three years. There are those who feel that if we can't know all the details of the construction then we should not begin to build the house. Their plan is to do nothing until everything is decided in final form. People who feel this way don't want a house of health.
The President has succeeded in convincing the majority of the Congress that the most effective way to provide both access to health care and control the cost of health care is to have everyone living in the same house that is universal coverage. No one can be excluded from the house because of where they lived before (pre-existing condition) and no one can be thrown out of the house because of problems they develop while living in a house. Today in the United States some 50 million people do not have a roof over their head and another equal number have a leaky roof that does not protect them when the storms come. Every other industrialized nation in the world has built a house of health for their people. It is inconceivable that the richest democracy on earth cannot provide a house of health to cover everyone.
When one builds a house there is not unlimited money available, so choices have to be made. None of these decisions are simple or easy, but they will be made over the course of the next three years as we build the house of health. Cost estimates will be made, but anyone who has done home construction knows that unexpected things come up which require decisions.
In 1965 when we built the house of health for senior citizens called Medicare, we could not anticipate all the changes that would occur in health care delivery since then. Congress has changed Medicare many times since it was created to keep up with the times and the needs of older Americans. This compassionate flexibility is at the heart of Medicare's popularity and success. The same process will go on as we build the house of health for the American people.
The President and the Congress are about to lay the foundation so that all Americans can live securely in the house of health, unafraid of the consequences of an illness or injury. This house will protect the American people from the weather they cannot predict. We must begin now.
I have to say that Congressman Grijalva's way of presenting the issue MAY make it more understandable to our citizens. It also emphases the (in my opinion) moral issue of providing healthcare to all American citizens.
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