Last night on Countdown, Sen. Rockefeller announced that he'd present a new amendment today in Finance Committee markup that would require insurance companies, who stand to make $465 billion off of this bill, to spend 85 percent of that money on actually providing care, limited their profits and overhead to $69.8 billion.
Rockefeller's office confirms that he will be offering this amendment in markup today. From an e-mailed press release:
Washington, D.C.—Senator John D. (Jay) Rockefeller IV will today introduce an amendment (modified Rockefeller C9) in the Senate Finance Committee to make certain insurance companies receiving taxpayer subsidies through the health insurance exchange are forced to spend more of the money they collect from premiums on actual medical care.
"It’s time for health insurance companies to spend more of the money they collect from premiums on actual medical care for people, not just marketing campaigns or purging tactics to appease Wall Street," said Senator Rockefeller, Chairman of the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Health Care. "More than half of the money allotted in the Senate Finance bill is going toward insurance company subsidies. We need some guarantee that these taxpayer dollars are being used to help American families get health care. Period. We must demand that with taxpayer dollars the health insurance companies put people before profits."
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Rockefeller’s modified C9 amendment is modeled after the Fairness In Health Insurance Act introduced by Senator Franken this week, along with Senators Rockefeller and Whitehouse as original co-sponsors.
The amendment requires insurers who participate in the exchange to spend 85 cents out of every dollar on health care.
The Senate Finance Committee’s bill provides $465 billion in subsidies to the insurance industry to provide health care to American consumers. All this amendment is saying is that they can only keep $69.8 billion of those subsidies for overhead and profits.
Typical examples of "administrative expenses" in health insurance company financial statements include: marketing and advertising, overhead, underwriting, salaries, broker commissions, lobbying, claims processing, and investment expenses.
This is brilliant, politically. In terms of actual policy, I'd like to see that percentage set at 95%. But for political purposes, this is very, very smart. This forces Conrad, Lincoln, and Baucus to actually show whether they are working for the American people, or for the insurance companies.
Much more discussion in Dallasdoc's (whose idea this was in the first place, heh) recommended diary.