Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius just walked into the lions' den today at the annual AHIP gathering in Washington, D.C., and called them out on their excessive premium hikes. Here's what she said below to private insurance lobbyists like Karen Ignani and insurance company CEOS:
When Americans have so few choices, can you blame them for being frustrated when their premiums go up ten times faster than the cost of health care? Imagine how folks in Illinois might feel after opening the newspaper to see that profits for major insurance companies went up 56 percent last year only to get a letter the next day saying their premiums are going up by double digits? Can you blame them for thinking the system's broken when their health insurance – which is supposed to protect them from exorbitant health costs – still forces them to pay thousands of dollars out of their pocket each year?
Here're more from the remarks prepared for delivery by HHS Secretary Sebelius below:
"So you have a choice.
You can choose to continue your opposition to reform. If you do and reform goes down in defeat, we know what will happen. By next March, premiums will be taking an even bigger bite out of Americans' wages. More Americans will lose the security of employer-sponsored insurance. More small businesses will be forced to shut down or cancel their employees' coverage. Parents and children with preexisting conditions will continue to be shut out of the insurance market. And Americans will continue to live in fear of the next letter from their insurer announcing the latest premium hike.
This strategy may work in the short run. I read that you've been advised that you may still be able to make money off the customers who are afraid to leave or who don't have other insurance options – at least for a while. But this kind of short-term thinking won't work in the long run for the American people or our health care system. It won't work for you.
Then there is your other choice.
You can choose to take the millions of dollars you have stored away for your next round of ads to kill meaningful reform, and use them to start giving Americans some relief from their skyrocketing premiums. Instead of spending your energy attacking the parts of the President's proposal you don't like, you can use it to strengthen the parts you do.
This is the woman that HHS Secretary Sebelius was speaking to in the audience---Karen Ignani of AHIP. Will Ignani really listen to HHS Secretary Sebelius and use the $1 million AHIP's earmarked for ads on lowering health premiums? No, she won't. She and her fellow lobbyists are all too eager to make sure the system works perfectly for them especially if health care reform fails. They don't give a whit because they figure they can continue to bleed us dry for short-term gain.
After all, we're an infinite market to them--we keep on growing generation by generation, and the sick and the old just die off, which keeps adding so-called "healthy" customers to their rolls which they can later drop off once these customers become sick and old. Even if health care reform does pass, these private insurers will still game the system and try to circumvent regulations. We'll be right there to shine attention on their misdeeds, and they may think we'll stop caring once the President signs the health care bill in connection with the reconciliation fix.
We won't stop caring about health care reform as long as AHIP exists. We'll continue working to make it clear that this country still needs and deserves a government alternative to the greed of private insurers. This is an ongoing battle for the health of the body politic, inside and out.
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