Most Popular
1. It’s a New Macro, the Gold Market Knows It, But Dead Men Walking Do Not (yet)- Gary_Tanashian
2.Stock Market Presidential Election Cycle Seasonal Trend Analysis - Nadeem_Walayat
3. Bitcoin S&P Pattern - Nadeem_Walayat
4.Nvidia Blow Off Top - Flying High like the Phoenix too Close to the Sun - Nadeem_Walayat
4.U.S. financial market’s “Weimar phase” impact to your fiat and digital assets - Raymond_Matison
5. How to Profit from the Global Warming ClImate Change Mega Death Trend - Part1 - Nadeem_Walayat
7.Bitcoin Gravy Train Trend Forecast 2024 - - Nadeem_Walayat
8.The Bond Trade and Interest Rates - Nadeem_Walayat
9.It’s Easy to Scream Stocks Bubble! - Stephen_McBride
10.Fed’s Next Intertest Rate Move might not align with popular consensus - Richard_Mills
Last 7 days
Nvidia Numero Uno in Count Down to President Donald Pump Election Victory - 5th Nov 24
Trump or Harris - Who Wins US Presidential Election 2024 Forecast Prediction - 5th Nov 24
Stock Market Brief in Count Down to US Election Result 2024 - 3rd Nov 24
Gold Stocks’ Winter Rally 2024 - 3rd Nov 24
Why Countdown to U.S. Recession is Underway - 3rd Nov 24
Stock Market Trend Forecast to Jan 2025 - 2nd Nov 24
President Donald PUMP Forecast to Win US Presidential Election 2024 - 1st Nov 24
At These Levels, Buying Silver Is Like Getting It At $5 In 2003 - 28th Oct 24
Nvidia Numero Uno Selling Shovels in the AI Gold Rush - 28th Oct 24
The Future of Online Casinos - 28th Oct 24
Panic in the Air As Stock Market Correction Delivers Deep Opps in AI Tech Stocks - 27th Oct 24
Stocks, Bitcoin, Crypto's Counting Down to President Donald Pump! - 27th Oct 24
UK Budget 2024 - What to do Before 30th Oct - Pensions and ISA's - 27th Oct 24
7 Days of Crypto Opportunities Starts NOW - 27th Oct 24
The Power Law in Venture Capital: How Visionary Investors Like Yuri Milner Have Shaped the Future - 27th Oct 24
This Points To Significantly Higher Silver Prices - 27th Oct 24
US House Prices Trend Forecast 2024 to 2026 - 11th Oct 24
US Housing Market Analysis - Immigration Drives House Prices Higher - 30th Sep 24
Stock Market October Correction - 30th Sep 24
The Folly of Tariffs and Trade Wars - 30th Sep 24
Gold: 5 principles to help you stay ahead of price turns - 30th Sep 24
The Everything Rally will Spark multi year Bull Market - 30th Sep 24
US FIXED MORTGAGES LIMITING SUPPLY - 23rd Sep 24
US Housing Market Free Equity - 23rd Sep 24
US Rate Cut FOMO In Stock Market Correction Window - 22nd Sep 24
US State Demographics - 22nd Sep 24
Gold and Silver Shine as the Fed Cuts Rates: What’s Next? - 22nd Sep 24
Stock Market Sentiment Speaks:Nothing Can Topple This Market - 22nd Sep 24
US Population Growth Rate - 17th Sep 24
Are Stocks Overheating? - 17th Sep 24
Sentiment Speaks: Silver Is At A Major Turning Point - 17th Sep 24
If The Stock Market Turn Quickly, How Bad Can Things Get? - 17th Sep 24
IMMIGRATION DRIVES HOUSE PRICES HIGHER - 12th Sep 24
Global Debt Bubble - 12th Sep 24
Gold’s Outlook CPI Data - 12th Sep 24

Market Oracle FREE Newsletter

How to Protect your Wealth by Investing in AI Tech Stocks

Obamacare Will Raise Average Policy By Thousands Of Dollars

Politics / US Politics Oct 12, 2009 - 02:57 PM GMT

By: Submissions

Politics

Tell Congress to REJECT ObamaCare!

FaxDC.com wants to send this urgent and personalized Blast Fax message to all 535 members of the House and Senate for YOU.


Alert: The health insurance industry is warning that a comprehensive Senate bill would increase the cost of a typical policy by hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars a year after lawmakers eased up on the requirement that all Americans get coverage.

The stinging attack, on the eve of a pivotal Senate vote, sent a clear message to President Barack Obama and congressional Democratic leaders who have been making headway on overhauling the nation's healthcare system. The industry fears that a weakening of the penalties for failing to get insurance would let Americans postpone getting coverage until they get sick.

The industry has worked for months behind the scenes to help shape healthcare reform. Unlike the 1990s, when the insurance industry contributed to the failure of President Bill Clinton's health overhaul, it has found the promise of millions of more people getting coverage too alluring to resist. Translation: millions of new consumers buying policies.

The industry wants lawmakers to expand coverage, not lessen the penalties that would reduce the number of people. The Senate Finance Committee is slated to vote on its 10-year, $829 billion bill on Tuesday, but more important to the industry are the steps beyond the panel's decision.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., will be merging the bill with a companion measure from the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, with the goal of a sweeping, affordable bill. In the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Democratic leaders have been pulling together legislation from three committees.

Angered by the insurance industry's late-in-coming cost estimate, a spokesman for Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont, questioned the credibility of the numbers.

"It's a health insurance company hatchet job, plain and simple," said the spokesman, Scott Mulhauser.

Late Sunday, the industry trade group America's Health Insurance Plans sent its member companies a new accounting firm study that projects the legislation would add $1,700 a year to the cost of family coverage in 2013, when most of the major provisions in the bill would be in effect.

Premiums for a single person would go up by $600 more than would be the case without the legislation, the PricewaterhouseCoopers analysis concluded in the study, which the insurance group had commissioned.

"Several major provisions in the current legislative proposal will cause healthcare costs to increase far faster and higher than they would under the current system," Karen Ignagni, the top industry lobbyist in Washington, wrote in a memo to insurance company CEOs.

The study projected that, in 2019, family premiums could be $4,000 higher, and individual premiums could be $1,500 higher.

Baucus spokesman Mulhauser said the study is "seriously flawed" because it doesn't take into account provisions in the legislation that would lower the cost of coverage, such as tax credits to help people buy private insurance, protections for current policies, and administrative savings from a revamped marketplace.

White House healthcare spokeswoman Linda Douglass concurred. "This is an insurance industry analysis that is designed to reach a conclusion which benefits the industry, and does not represent what the bill does," she said.

The Baucus plan, which faces a final committee vote on Tuesday, got a boost last week when the Congressional Budget Office estimated it would cover 94 percent of eligible Americans while reducing the federal deficit.

But the PricewaterhouseCoopers analysis attempted to get at a different issue: costs for privately insured individuals.

It concluded that a combination of factors in the bill and lawmakers' decisions as they amended it would raise costs.

The chief reason is the lawmakers' decision to weaken proposed penalties for failing to get health insurance, the report said. The bill would require insurers to take all applicants, doing away with denials for pre-existing health problems. In return, all Americans would be required to carry coverage, either through an employer or a government program, or buying it themselves.

But the CBO estimated that, even with new federal subsidies, about 17 million Americans still would be unable to afford health insurance. Faced with that affordability problem, senators opted to ease the fines for going without coverage from the levels Baucus originally proposed. That will only let people postpone getting coverage until they get sick, the industry says.

Other factors leading to higher costs include a new tax on high-cost health insurance plans, cuts in Medicare payments to hospitals and doctors, and a series of new taxes on insurers and other healthcare industries, the report said.

"Health reform could have a significant impact on the cost of private health insurance coverage," it concluded.

Insurers played a major role in defeating then-President Bill Clinton's healthcare plan in the 1990s. Sunday, the industry stopped short of signaling all-out opposition. "We will continue to work with policymakers in support of workable bipartisan reform," Ignagni said in her memo. (Newsmax)

DO NOT BE SILENCED BY ANYONE STAND UP! MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD!

TAKE ACTION: Send YOUR blast FAX to ALL 535 Congressman NOW!

To visit FaxDC.com, click here: http://faxdc.com/

To view Your Fax Message, click here: http://faxdc.com/healthcare.htm

To Fax Blast Capitol Hill, click here: http://faxdc.com/healthorder.htm

Fax Specials, click here: http://faxdc.com/flagbearer.htm

To view the Ultimate Protest Package, click here: http://faxdc.com/ultimateprotestpackage.htm

Be part of the FaxDC.com Army and subscribe to the Auto-Fax Program
$ 25.00 per month at: http://www.faxdc.com/friends.htm

Thank You Patriot! Your friends at FaxDC.com

NOTE: Be sure to send this Alert to EVERYONE you know who supports saving America and Protecting our Middle Class. Thank you!


© 2005-2022 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.


Post Comment

Only logged in users are allowed to post comments. Register/ Log in