AHIP meet YES WE CAN

DarkSyde has come up with a new name for America's largest health insurer, UnitedDeath. And nyceve just throught of a better title for the diary.

This is how the the chief lobbyist for AHIP, Karen Ignagni belittles the investigation into UnitedHealth and others by Andrew Cuomo the New York State Attorney General.

Let's do two things at this interesting juncture. Step back for a moment and understand the flagrant distortion contained in the statement. Then recognize that these are the unscrupulous people healthcare Swiftboaters we will be battling come January, 2009.

AHIP Statement on New York Attorney General’s Announcement
   

Washington, D.C. - Karen Ignagni, President and CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans, today issued the following statement:

"Today’s announcement presents an opportunity to shed light on one of the root causes of rising health care costs in America.

"At a time when the costs of medical services soar above inflation every year, health insurance plans’ tools and techniques are mitigating the damage done to consumers and employers. Last year, health insurance premiums grew at the lowest rate in a decade due to health plans’ cost-containment and quality-improvement strategies.

"It’s unfortunate that today’s media event ignored these facts and failed to address the appropriateness of charging out-of-network patients $200 for ‘simple doctor visits’ lasting ‘15 minutes’ -- which equates to a billing rate of at least $800 an hour. As medical costs continue to soar, this is the discussion that public policy leaders need to have."

http://www.hiaa.org/...

Within a matter of months, we will confront these sociopaths in all their glory. They are no different than Bush, Rove and the Swiftboat machine. Like Bush/Rove, they  will work tirelessly to instill fear and despair in the American people.  

This will be when, as they say, the pedal meets the metal. This will be a defining moment in our history.  This will be when YES WE CAN, moves into the streets, and the Congressional offices of America. This will be the moment when we will know whether YES WE CAN, are three little words or if YES WE CAN is a historic call to action.

I read somewhere, and it has the ring of truth, that during the coming war for the hearts and minds of the American people, AHIP and its surrogates, will make every effort to keep its grotesque fingerprints off their vile deeds. It is believed that if the American people can trace another healthcare reform debacle directly to AHIP--there will be a groundswell of support for single-payer. YES WE CAN.

Back to reality. Despite campaign rhetoric promising a lobbyist free White House, it is very likely that Ms. Ignagni, not nyceve will be sitting at the side of President Obama or President Clinton. She will spout lies, half-truths and self-serving drivel. Unless AHIP is stopped (very unlikely), by an outpouring of public revulsion at their smears and their flagrant attempts to derail healthcare reform--again, this organization intends to purchase at least half the seats at the healthcare reform negotiating table. YES WE CAN.

Let's look at the daily dose of AHIP lies. It's unlikely that anyone at AHIP reads a pedestrian publication like the New England Journal of Medicine.  In the February 8, 2007 issue, Robert Kuttner makes a compelling, reasonable and logical case for single payer healthcare.

Let's compare one of the most esteemed medical journals in the United States, if not the world, with the pathologic lying of AHIP.

20% of GDP in just seven short years:

Market-Based Failure — A Second Opinion on U.S. Health Care Costs

U.S. health care expenditures rose 6.7% in 2006, the government recently reported. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, total health care expenditures exceeded $2.1 trillion, or more than $7,000 for every American man, woman, and child.1 Medicare costs jumped a record 18.7%, driven by the new privatized drug benefit. Total health care spending, now amounting to 16% of the gross domestic product, is projected to reach 20% in just 7 years.

Relentless medical inflation has been attributed to many factors — the aging population, the proliferation of new technologies, poor diet and lack of exercise, the tendency of supply (physicians, hospitals, tests, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and novel treatments) to generate its own demand, excessive litigation and defensive medicine, and tax-favored insurance coverage.

http://content.nejm.org/...

Contrary to what Ms. Ignagni says, the for-profit system she so happily pimps, is the reason for the unsustainable rise in healthcare costs.

Here is a second opinion. Changing demographics and medical technology pose a cost challenge for every nation's system, but ours is the outlier. The extreme failure of the United States to contain medical costs results primarily from our unique, pervasive commercialization. The dominance of for-profit insurance and pharmaceutical companies, a new wave of investor-owned specialty hospitals, and profit-maximizing behavior even by nonprofit players raise costs and distort resource allocation. Profits, billing, marketing, and the gratuitous costs of private bureaucracies siphon off $400 billion to $500 billion of the $2.1 trillion spent, but the more serious and less appreciated syndrome is the set of perverse incentives produced by commercial dominance of the system.

. . .The private insurance system's main techniques for holding down costs are practicing risk selection, limiting the services covered, constraining payments to providers, and shifting costs to patients. But given the system's fragmentation and perverse incentives, much cost-effective care is squeezed out, resources are increasingly allocated in response to profit opportunities rather than medical need, many attainable efficiencies are not achieved, unnecessary medical care is provided for profit, administrative expenses are high, and enormous sums are squandered in efforts to game the system. The result is a blend of overtreatment and undertreatment — and escalating costs. Researchers calculate that between one fifth and one third of medical outlays do nothing to improve health.

http://content.nejm.org/...

Ms. Ignagni mentions cost-containment. Let's see what AHIP style cost-containment entails.

Instead, cost-containment efforts have fallen heavily on primary care physicians, who have seen caseloads increase and net earnings stagnate or decline. A popular strategy among cost-containment consultants relies on the psychology of income targeting. The idea is that physicians have a mental picture of expected earnings — an income target. If the insurance plan squeezes their income by reducing payments per visit, doctors compensate by increasing their caseload and spending less time with each patient.

. . .A second cost-containment tactic is to hike deductibles and copayments, whose frank purpose is to dissuade people from going to the doctor. But sometimes seeing the doctor is medically indicated, and waiting until conditions are dire costs the system far more money than it saves. Moreover, at some point during each year, more than 80 million Americans go without coverage, which makes them even less likely to seek preventive care.4

I urge you to read the rest of this quite extraordinary analysis.

A couple more things.

Do you know about the economic principle called Stein's Law? You should.

Our broken and collapsed healthcare system is a perfect example of Stein's Law. It is unsustainable. It cannot go on.

Academic economists often cite Stein's Law, a principle enunciated by the late Herbert Stein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Nixon administration. The law comes with various wordings; my favorite is: "Things that can't go on forever, don't." Believe it or not, that's a useful reminder.

I'll end with this email I recently received from a Kossack.  This is the reality of "affordable" insurance in the United States of America.

This Kossack has been cost-contained into the land of the 47 million.

My ex-husband is an insulin-dependent diabetic.  He's suffering all the side effects that go along with diabetes.  He used to work for a company with good insurance benefits, but he left that position to open his own mechanics shop several years ago.  He kept his insurance through COBRA, but he now finds himself in a position where he can no longer pay for this insurance.  His business is slow, the winter months have not been kind.  He told me that last month he didn't bring in enough money during the whole month to cover the premium.  So he's let the insurance go and now is uninsured.  This means he won't be able to pay for the care he needs or the insulin, syringes, and other medication he takes for his various diabetes-related illnesses.  I suggested medicaid, but he owns property that would disqualify him from getting medicaid, even though he couldn't sell that property due to the slow real estate market.  And besides, he doesn't want to sell it, it's his business and he won't have anything at all without it, no chance of making any income.  Because of the advanced nature of the disease, he couldn't get a job elsewhere even if he wanted to, and no independent insurance company is going to touch him.  So he's in a quandary, and I'm very worried about him.

As far as Attorney General Cuomo's "media event", some good folks on Wall Street, trading undoubtedly on insider information, made a killing on UnitedDeath stock.

And finally, one more word on  AHIP. Do yourself a favor and take a look at their website called  AHIP Believes.

YES WE CAN.