This morning, Obama spoke to a Philadelphia crowd at Arcadia University, pushing hard on passing health insurance reform and particularly two themes aimed at getting Congress to act: new evidence that the market concentration for insurance is so monopolized that insurers will continue to raise prices and lose customers in order to maintain profits, and the benefits that will start immediately with passage of reform.
From his remarks as prepared:
Every year, insurance companies deny more people coverage because they have a pre-existing condition. Every year, they drop more people’s coverage when they’re sick and need it most. Every year, they raise premiums higher and higher. Just last month, Anthem Blue Cross in California tried to jack up rates by nearly 40%. In my home state of Illinois rates are going up by as much as 60%. And you just heard from Leslie, who was hit with a 100% rate increase. 100%. One letter from her insurance company and her premiums doubled. Just like that.
You see, these insurance companies have made a calculation. The other day, on a conference call organized by Goldman Sachs, an insurance broker told Wall Street investors that insurance companies know they will lose customers if they keep raising premiums. But since there’s so little competition in the insurance industry, they’re ok with people being priced out of health insurance because they’ll still make more by raising premiums on the customers they have. And they will keep doing this for as long as they can get away with it.
This will likely be the primary focus of Obama's efforts this week to push the reform effot, following on a blog post by Dan Pfeiffer hammering the theme that "the insurers’ monopoly is so strong that they can continue to jack up rates as much as they like – even if it means losing customers – and their profits will continue to soar under the status quo."
Obama's other theme today seemed focused on reiterating for Congressional Dems that some reforms will kick in this year, and will be something strong to run on in November. Greg Sargent has this excerpt
Within the first year of signing health care reform, thousands of uninsured Americans with preexisting conditions would suddenly be able to purchase health insurance for the very first time in their lives.
This year, insurance companies will be banned forever from denying coverage to children with preexisting conditions.
This year, they will be banned from dropping your coverage when you get sick. And they will no longer able to arbitrarily and massively hike your premiums. Those practices will end.
If this reform becomes law, all the new insurance plans will be required to offer free preventive care to customers starting this year. Free checkups so we can catch preventable diseases.
Starting this year, there will be no more lifetime restricive annual limits on the amount of care you can receive from your insurance companies...
It would change fast: Insurance companies would finally be held accountable to the American people.
With the 50th Senator, Mark Begich, agreeing to go with reconciliation, this push is needs to be focused primarily House Blue Dogs. The larger problems still unresolved, which might have to take more direct, personal intervention from Obama, is how to resolve Stupak without throwing American women under the bus. It's not entirely clear that Stupak actually does have the 12 votes he says he has, but Obama should be having some one-on-one discussions with those potential twelve.
The other issue that remains unspoken in these remarks is the one thing that would actually provide real competition to those insurance companies--the public option. The effort in the Senate just picked up its 37th supporter, Chris Dodd.
TomP has more in his diary.