As many of us feared, despite the passage of the historic health care reform legislation, the for-profit insurance corporation have no intention of abiding by the letter or spirit of the law.
So which group of citizens is the first target of AHIP and it's member insurance corporations? Children.
This is what Kaiser Health News is reporting.
America's Health Insurance Plans, the main insurance lobbying group, says through a spokesman that it interprets the new law as not requiring insurers to cover all child applicants this year.
Health insurers worry that if they're forced to cover all children regardless of health condition, higher rates will result, because only the families of sick kids would apply. That problem, they say, could be largely avoided if the requirement went into effect in 2014, when most Americans will have to have coverage under the law. AHIP says higher rates resulted when New York and a handful of other states enacted "guarantee-issue" laws requiring insurers to offer coverage to all applicants.
Make no mistake, AHIP is targeting sick children.
"It is important to keep in mind the experience in states that implemented guarantee - issue laws without getting everyone covered, and the impact those reforms had on the affordability of health care coverage,"said AHIP spokesman Robert Zirkelbach.
This is why so many Americans have a real hard time understanding how in one breath President Obama is rightfully throwing darts at this murderous industry, and in the next, telling the American people that this is the industry which will remain at the center of our "reformed" health care system. As he used to say, "we need a public option to keep the insurers honest".
Those of us who were supporters of single payer, compromised to supporting a bill which included a public option. Then we compromised some more on the compromise to support the legislation as it is currently written. But if we were less than enthusiastic, it's because we knew that insurers would do all in their power to not comply. And guess what, out of the box, they're targeting sick kids.
So, now we're being told HHS will issue some clarifying language. Great. Then the parents with the sick kids will attempt to enroll the kid in an insurance plan. The poor parent will be on her own, fighting the corporation to comply with the law. And what will this insurance cost? Does anyone think the insurers are going to stand down? Of course not, the fines for violating the law are negligible, they'll take the fine.
Here's what the CEO of Blue Cross in Florida had to say:
Randy Kammer, a vice president for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida, the largest health insurer in that state, said she interprets the law as allowing insurers to reject coverage for children in some cases until 2014.
http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/...
And if a for-profit insurer agrees to insure a kid with a pre-existing condition, what will it cost? Here's your answer, folks.
The issue mainly involves parents who buy coverage for children on the individual market and whose children have been uninsured more than two months. Federal law requires insurers to cover children who do not have a large gap in coverage.
One thing is clear: The law does nothing to stop insurers from charging higher rates for children with pre-existing illnesses until 2014 when insurers can no longer use health status in setting premiums.
http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/...
Even worse for Democrats (who own this legislation), at every single bend in the road, the insurance industry is guaranteeing higher premiums. On the day the legislation was passed in the House, here was the ominous warning from the thugs at AHIP.
How in the world does Obama run on sharply higher premiums, higher co-pays, and higher deductibles in 2012? Don't believe me, but believe what Rose Ann DeMoro, the executive director of National Nurses United, AFL-CIO and California Nurses Association has to say about this legislation.
If you have followed this industry for many years as I have, you should not be surprised that out of the box, this is their response. DELAY, DENY AND DECEIVE. What is unfolding is precisely from the insurance industry playbook. Insurers will do anything possible to evade even the semblance of awareness that a new day has arrived in the United States.
AHIP (America's health Insurance Plans) is so devoid of a moral compass, that with one hand it wages war against sick children, with the other, its chief lobbyist Karen Ignagni, talks about how AHIP will work with health care reform advocates to begin the long process leading up to 2014, of enrolling millions of Americans.
We are working on an exciting project to expose insurer atrocities, and will have much more to say about this in the near future.
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