The special interests seeking to gut those portions of the health reform law that would be of greatest benefit to consumers clearly believe there is no such thing as historical memory in Washington.
Why else would they bring one of their old front groups out of the storage locker, with just a single new word added to its name? A front group designed to persuade Americans that what they might have thought was in their best interests really isn't after all.
In the late 1990s, health insurers and their most reliable business allies -- including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) -- set up a front group called the Health Benefits Coalition. Back then, the industry's target was the Patient's Bill of Rights, which would have made insurance firms behave in a more consumer-friendly way. Among other things, the bill of rights would have forced insurers to make an external review process available to health plan enrollees who were denied coverage for doctor-ordered treatments. It also would have given enrollees an expanded right to sue their insurers for wrongful denials of coverage.
The Patient's Bill of Rights was popular with the public, health care providers and members of Congress on both sides of the aisle. It attracted bipartisan support in both the House and Senate. The sponsors of the Senate version of the bill, in fact, were none other than Republican John McCain of Arizona and Democrat Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts.
Insurers hated it, of course, but knew they would not be able to kill it without the support of other powerful groups. They set out to persuade the Chamber, the NFIB and other groups with clout in Washington, including the National Association of Manufacturers, to join them in creating a new front group that would be operated out of a big PR firm in Washington, Porter Novelli.
It was an easy sell. The insurers convinced the business groups that they too should be worried about the bill because it could also lead to lawsuits against companies whose workers get their coverage through the workplace. The groups gladly signed on, especially after being told that it wouldn't cost them much. What the insurers really wanted was the ability to use the names of those other groups on the coalition's letterhead. Most of the money to carry out the PR and lobbying work of the Health Benefits Coalition would come from a handful of big insurance firms and their trade groups. I know this because I attended many meetings of the coalition as CIGNA's representative at Porter Novelli's office.
The core element of the coalition's communications strategy: fear-mongering. The objective was to convince the public and lawmakers that enactment of the Patient's Bill of Rights would lead to a tidal wave of frivolous lawsuits that would cause health insurance premiums to skyrocket.
It worked brilliantly, as do most fear-based campaigns. No Patient's Bill of Rights was ever enacted. Patients still have little recourse in the courts if they have been denied coverage for needed care. The feared tidal wave of lawsuits was averted. Health insurance premiums, well they skyrocketed anyway.
Remembering the success of the Health Benefits Coalition, the insurance industry last month brought it out of storage, rechristened it and gave it a new mission. It is now the Essential Health Benefits Coalition, and its goal is to persuade the Obama administration to allow insurers and employers to continue selling policies that are swelling the ranks of the underinsured.
The health care reform law contains a provision that prohibits insurers from selling coverage that doesn't contain certain "essential benefits." The law gave the Department of Health and Human Services the responsibility of determining exactly what those benefits should be. Consumer advocates believe HHS should consider the adequacy of benefits first and foremost. If the essential benefits package is too skimpy, they argue, more and more insurance plans in the future will fall well short of meeting the needs of most American families. But through their new front group, the insurers and their allies insist that HHS must consider cost first, not adequacy.
It already is clear that the Essential Health Benefits Coalition's campaign of persuasion will be fear-based, just as its predecessor's campaign was more than a decade ago. The executive director of the coalition contends that if HHS sides with consumer groups, then health plans sold beginning in 2014 -- the effective date of many of the reform law's provisions -- will be so "overpriced" that employees and employers won't be able to afford them.
That executive director, by the way, is Brendan Daly, a former aide to House leader Nancy Pelosi who will run the coalition from his office at the big PR firm he joined late last year, Ogilvy Washington. Apparently with a straight face, Daly is telling the media that the coalition "is simply trying to make the law more affordable."
If you're persuaded to believe affordability is the coalition's real agenda, keep in mind that the groups behind it include the insurers' two big trade PR and lobbying groups -- America's Health Insurance Plans and the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association -- both of which spent millions trying to shape the reform law to their liking, and the Chamber and NFIB, which spent millions more trying to defeat it. And if you soon find yourself among the underinsured, now you don't have to wonder why.
Follow Wendell Potter on Twitter: www.twitter.com/wendellpotter
Thanks for your important information.
I greatly enjoy your articles.
Truly, no more Cain headlines until this gets posted... geez.
Today is Veterans Day, yet the main article here is a recycled one from yesterday with a new heading.....the story of this decades veterans is very intertwined with Wendell's article, yet here this article sits.....how disappointing and yet, typical.
Comprehensive article that substantially covers the crucial role that this exemption plays in allowing the health insurance industry to price fix, collude and use other monopolistic practices:
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/02/health_antitrust101.html
*Most notably for conservatives, maintaining the exemption flies in the face of those who would reasonably and pragmatically advocate for a lowering of health care costs by encouraging market oriented reforms.
Regardless of your feelings on any other aspect of health care reform this is something that we should all be able to agree upon.
This Monopolistic exemption should be ended.
Further Information on this Historic House Effort:
http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-belle/house-votes-repeal-anti-trust-exempti
Contact Your Elected Officials Easily:
http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml
2 Excellent Sources for Tracking Lobbying and Influence:
OpenSecrets.org
Maplight.org
To date I haven't heard that the tidal wave of frivolous lawsuits has hit our shores as predicted back in the 1990s, but although The Patients Bill of Rights was defeated as they desired, that sure didn't stop premiums from "skyrocketing" over the last 10+ years. What a con job..
They defeated the Patient's Bill of Rights from the inside out - now they are preparing to gut the health care act the same way.
Is there anyway to stop HHS from selling us out?
I complained to my congressperson re a new planned FDA rule but was basically told they can do what they want...
This is the equivalent of Hershey's making the candybar smaller but keeping the same price... but with much, much larger ramifications to peoples' lives. Really sad.
Why is this buried in a sidebar? HuffPo is part of the problem of disinformation... or rather emphasizing fluff stories re Cain BS.... oooh, shiny!.... which takes the focus off of REAL ISSUES like this one!
Once again Wendell... you are one of my heroes... thanks so much for getting the word out about this... the one thing I wonder... is there any viable way to stop this HHS decision?
When I contacted my (liberal) Congressperson about proposed changes to FDA guidelines, he indicated that was an internal decision and there wasn't much he could do about it?
How can we stop this? Thank you.
I hope, with the momentum of the Occupy movement, we can as a society put an end to such self-destructive systems. I say "we" because we allow it to happen. We vote for politicians without due diligence and vetting, because they look good or simply because of exposure through lots of commercials. Then when those in office support legislation that is against our own well-being, against our right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," we just shrug in defeat.
That time is over. We need to occupy ourselves and our world - because we've been absent!
In fact, Bill Gates could fund a nation wide coalition of Progressive health care providers provide services with no "obscene profits".
Between these two powerful Progressive initiatives, why pass laws to achieve this? Could it be Progressives are wrong? Always.
And now we know why we don't have single payer, and we have an Obamacare plan that forces us to buy from the insurance industry at whatever price they decide to pay.
Dems and Repubs all work for the same corporate "constituents".
Big business and the insurance industry will always win out over people because the money they lobby with has corrupted those who are in a position to legislate our laws.....
If this nation truly cared about it's citizens, our government would have given us Medicare for all, with close oversight to prevent fraud. Until that time, we are left with a huge, wealthy industry intent on selling us policies that either bleed us dry or deny us the care we thought we were paying for..........
We are currently at 80 million people w/o healthcare and counting......
As always, thank you to Wendell Potter......
My neice repeats verbatim the talking points generated in think tanks on these issues, and she is neither dumb or selfish, but as a hard working mom she just doesn't have time to investigate things so when she hears that some (fill in the blank with any nonsense name that includes things like "patriotic" and or "American" or "family") she assumes they are offering legitimate information not propaganda.
I think this is related to the idea she holds that there are some sort of laws that mean people on TV can't lie or can't have a news license if they do offer false material
People need to start paying attention, reading, digging for the truth. In the Internet Age it's no longer that hard to find.
And people need to realize that unless they are soul-less millionaires, CEOs, or aspire to be one or the other, the Republican Party does not care about them - except to use as a patsy & pawn to garner votes and blind, foolish support.
What's the socio economic requirement to participate in any of these offerings you ask. None in so much as you just want to pay less and not gamble your health and finances against a for profit insurance, banking, stock brokerage or credit card industries. While this controlled and heavily lobbied extortions is legal, the time has come past due too for the creation of this for customers by customers entity. Bill Gates and a couple of civic minded people with deep pockets who believe this is the only answer today are thinking let's do this just to watch the dying gasp of organized crime.