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You probably have never heard of Robin Beaton, and that's what's wrong with the debate over health care reform.

Beaton, a retired nurse from Waxahachie, Texas, had health insurance -- or so she thought. She paid her premiums faithfully every month, but when she was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer, her health insurance company, Blue Cross, dumped her.

The insurance company said the fact that she had seen a dermatologist for acne, who mistakenly entered a notation on her chart that suggested her simple acne was a precancerous condition, allowed Blue Cross to leave her in the lurch.

Beaton testified before a House subcommittee this week. So did other Americans who thought they had insurance but got the shaft. As Karen Tumulty of Time magazine (who has been the journalistic conscience of health care coverage) wrote, other witnesses included:

"Peggy Raddatz, whose brother Otto Raddatz lost his insurance coverage right before he was scheduled to receive an expensive stem-cell transplant to treat his lymphoma. Why? Because Fortis Insurance Company discovered his doctor had found gall stones and an aneurysm on a CT scan -- conditions that had nothing to do with his cancer, that never bothered him and that he wasn't even aware of. And Jennifer Wittney Horton of Los Angeles, California, whose coverage was canceled because she had been taking a drug for irregular menstruation. Now, she can't get coverage anywhere else. 'Since my rescission, I have had to take jobs that I do not want, and put my career goals on hold to ensure that I can find health insurance,' she told the subcommittee."

The subcommittee's chairman, Democrat Bart Stupak of Michigan, called the hearing to highlight the obnoxious and unethical practice called rescission. His researchers produced performance reviews of insurance company bureaucrats who were praised and rewarded for kicking people off their coverage.

Then Stupak asked three health insurance executives the big question: Will your company pledge to end the practice of rescission except in cases of intentional fraud?

All three health insurance executives said no.

It was as dramatic as congressional testimony gets. Yet it got no airtime on the networks, nor, as far as I can tell, on cable news, although CNN.com did run a story. Time's Tumulty was all over it, as was Lisa Girion of The Lost Angeles Times. But the story did not make The New York Times.

Nor The Washington Post, which found space on the front page the morning after the hearing for a story on the cancellation of Fourth of July fireworks in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, but not a story on the cancellation of health insurance for deathly ill Americans who've paid their premiums.

Stupak, and the Energy and Commerce Committee chairman, Henry Waxman, D-California, did their job. Why didn't the media do its? Why were the outrages uncovered by Stupak and Waxman un-covered by most of the media?

Maybe because the Obama White House drew the spotlight away from health care. They'd diverted the media to cover Obama's proposed reforms of the financial regulatory system.

On the last day of the 1992 Clinton-Gore campaign, we had the media A-Team traveling with us. So I made it my business to sit next to David Gergen, then with U.S. News & World Report but a former top aide to Presidents Nixon, Ford and Reagan (at that point -- little did I know he would soon be working for President Clinton). I had never seen a communications shop as effective as Reagan's, and I wasn't going to miss an opportunity to learn from a master. Gergen told me an anecdote I still remember vividly.

In the opening months of the Reagan presidency, it was the economy, stupid. America was mired in a recession, and President Reagan wanted to focus the nation's attention on his economic plan. But Secretary of State Al Haig had other ideas. The State Department had nothing to do with the economy, and Haig had ambitious plans. So, Gergen told me, Haig got a bunch of good press, advocating for intercepting Cuban gun runners (if memory serves).

You would think a staunch anti-Communist such as Reagan would have been happy. But, no. Reagan's chief of staff, James Baker, upbraided Haig for diverting media attention away from the primary goal: passing the president's economic plan.

I never forgot Gergen's story -- especially when the Clinton White House wandered off message as it tried to pursue fundamental reform of the health care system.

The economic plan eclipsed health care for much of Clinton's first year. As did NAFTA. And the crime bill, which included the Brady Bill and other gun control measures. And don't forget gays in the military. And a foreign policy crisis in Somalia -- and another in Haiti. And another in Russia.

Clinton gave his health care address to the Congress on September 23, 1993. October was supposed to be "Health Care Month" in the White House, but so many other issues got in the way that he had just one public event focused on health care in the entire month -- just one.

I understand that Obama's White House team has to juggle a lot of issues; I've been there. And I'm sure the Obama financial reforms have merit. But if the president wants to pass his ambitious health care reform, he's going to have to put other, worthy, ideas on the back burner and shine the media spotlight on the plight of people like Robin Beaton.

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Bolding mine. If you you think this rescission is an aberration, don't. In fact, it makes perfect sense for insurance companies to behave this way. After all, every time one of their policyholders gets sick, they lose money. As an entity, they are weakened. It is in their best interests to aggressively seek out any justification whatsoever to terminate the coverage of sick customers, and the sooner it occurs, the fewer their losses will be.

Now, you might think that by denying themselves the premiums of their former customer, they're cutting off their nose to spite their face, so speak. Frankly, treating long-term illnesses like cancer or HIV is expensive, and it can drag on for years or decades. It is simply good business practice to exhaust every legal avenue of delaying or avoiding payment for said treatments, because a contract with a customer remains profitable only as long as the customer remains healthy.

I haven't the foggiest idea why there hasn't been an uproar in the news media about this. I guess the Iran protests have dominated stuff, but still, what about other media? Why aren't advocacy groups for socialized medicine flooding TV networks with commercials detailing insurance company horror stories such as this? Seems like it'd be prime fodder to froth up the debate.

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Blindy. had this to say about Jimmy Carter:
guys people don't have a right to live unless they can afford to

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Even if they can afford to, and continue giving money to be able to, up until the big problem, it seems.

Blindy. fucked around with this message on 06-20-2009 at 11:46 AM.

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Over the mountain, in between the ups and downs, I ran into Karnaj who doth quote:
Bolding mine. If you you think this rescission is an aberration, don't. In fact, it makes perfect sense for insurance companies to behave this way. After all, every time one of their policyholders gets sick, they lose money. As an entity, they are weakened. It is in their best interests to aggressively seek out any justification whatsoever to terminate the coverage of sick customers, and the sooner it occurs, the fewer their losses will be.

Now, you might think that by denying themselves the premiums of their former customer, they're cutting off their nose to spite their face, so speak. Frankly, treating long-term illnesses like cancer or HIV is expensive, and it can drag on for years or decades. It is simply good business practice to exhaust every legal avenue of delaying or avoiding payment for said treatments, because a contract with a customer remains profitable only as long as the customer remains healthy.

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And you don't think it's possible that the government will behave the same way?

In fact, a government run health authority would have even more incentive to deny service to the grievously ill or elderly - by doing so they save themselves the cost of the care, but if the person for whom treatment was denied refuses to pay their "premium", they just send the police in to beat down their door and throw them in federal prison.

They gain everything and lose nothing. Why do you still support a government monopoly on healthcare?

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The aptly named Blindy said:
guys people don't have a right to live unless they can afford to

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Healthcare is a necessary good, much like food, clothing, or shelter. The fact that it is necessary doesn't change the fact that it is, in fact, a product created in limited quantities just like any other product.

Changing the method of distribution will not result in more product, just different people getting it. You're still condemning people to death, the only difference is that under the current system the condemned can work very hard to earn money and escape their sentence. Under a government monopoly, no amount of hard work will save them.

The real solution, as with any shortage of any product of society, is to make it easier and more rewarding to produce that product.

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Peanut butter ass Shaq Blindy. booooze lime pole over bench lick:
i don't think anyone has said that it would become illegal to take money in exchange for medical services. but since that system is the most dysfunctional, go ahead and assume that's what we'd get.

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The alternative is a system like that in England, or here in our public schools; a vastly superior private industry and a struggling, inefficient public one. To shop in the private industry you need to pay for both the private and the public service, and so only the very wealthy can afford quality service. Is that really the sort of world you want to create?

Read about the Tennessee Valley Authority. Creating a public service that competes with a private service but also receives mandatory funding from the public gives an enormous anti-competitive advantage to the public service that the private services have no way to match, short of hiring paramilitary troops to rob people. It's no less destructive than creating a strict monopoly.

you're a fan of education vouchers IIRC, this is exactly the same thing, but with medicine.

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Blindy. painfully thought these words up:
i'm pretty sure the idea is that health insurance would be government provided, but all care would still be private. the government would provide a certain amount of money for various procedures, enough to cover the average cost of them. if you wished to go to a more expensive servicer, you would pay the difference.

you're a fan of education vouchers IIRC, this is exactly the same thing, but with medicine.

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But the government is going to do 'efficiency studies' to determine what is the singular best way to treat a condition. All other methods of treatment will effectively be forbidden.

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I bet you never expected Naimah to say:
But the government is going to do 'efficiency studies' to determine what is the singular best way to treat a condition. All other methods of treatment will effectively be forbidden.

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insurance companies already do that and refuse to pay for procedures and practices that they think are inefficient or extra expensive. if you want a procedure that they won't pay for, you can either petition to get it or decide to pay for it yourself, and that won't change.

the only thing that will change is that insurance companies are way more concerned about saving money than the government ever would be.

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Blindy. had this to say about (_|_):
insurance companies already do that and refuse to pay for procedures and practices that they think are inefficient or extra expensive. if you want a procedure that they won't pay for, you can either petition to get it or decide to pay for it yourself, and that won't change.

the only thing that will change is that insurance companies are way more concerned about saving money than the government ever would be.

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But the insurance company has a vested interest in trying to find better ways to treat people, that may one day end up being cheaper then what they are doing now. Why? Because they want to save money in the long run. The government won't take that view. They will say it isn't approved in our bureaucracy so go fuck yourself. Then you'll say fine I'll take my premiums elsewhere and go to that other government that just started up and you've heard nice things about... oh, wait.

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Aw, geez, I have Maradon! all over myself!
And you don't think it's possible that the government will behave the same way?

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The bulk of the evidence from single-payer systems across western Europe suggests they won't. Why would they practice rescission, anyway, especially if they're not legally empowered to do so?

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In fact, a government run health authority would have even more incentive to deny service to the grievously ill or elderly - by doing so they save themselves the cost of the care,

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Why does the government care about savings, again? And further, why do you define the provision of health care by the government as being legally empowered to deny service by what boils down to fiat? Does anything in extant models suggest that this is standard practice in other countries, and if so, where is your evidence of this?

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but if the person for whom treatment was denied refuses to pay their "premium", they just send the police in to beat down their door and throw them in federal prison.

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Duh. If you don't pay your taxes, you go to jail. No amount of foot-stamping is going to change this. Grow up.

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They gain everything and lose nothing. Why do you still support a government monopoly on healthcare?

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Where the hell would you get such a notion? I support government-run health insurance. Let the care be provided by private hospitals, clinics, and such; they'll bill the government. Frankly, I'd rather deal with a government system which is legally obligated to pay for my care, than a private corporation which is legally empowered to terminate coverage for reasons beyond my control.

BUT THE MARKET FORCES GUYS

Blindy. fucked around with this message on 06-22-2009 at 06:13 PM.

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Vorbis had this to say about Duck Tales:
A couple years back, I was working in a doctor's office. All day I would get insurance companies to pay out for medicines they didn't normally cover. One insurance agent refused to cover medicine for Metabolic Syndrome (pre-diabetes) because his company's average client remained with them for only two years, and they had a policy of not "passing savings along to another company."

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Wait, as in they wouldn't pay for medication to prevent people from developing full diabetes because it's more expensive for other companies to have to pay to treat full diabetics who dropped from that particular company?

MARKET FORCES

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Blindy. had this to say about Matthew Broderick:
THE REST OF THE WESTERN WORLD HAS BETTER LIFE EXPECTANCY AND SPENDS LESS ON HEALTH CARE BUT THEIR SYSTEMS ARE UNWORKABLE AND WOULD BE A DISASTER TO IMPLEMENT HERE RAWR.

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Pages 132-133. If you factor out non healthcare accidental deaths and lifestyle choices we have the number one life expectancy. If you don't like that presentation, here it is from a Nobel Prize winner.

Jesus Christ

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The Pacific Research Institute (PRI) or officially the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, is a prominent California-based conservative think tank founded in 1979 whose stated vision is the promotion of "the principles of individual freedom and personal responsibility. The Institute believes these principles are best encouraged through policies that emphasize a free economy, private initiative, and limited government."[1] The Pacific Research Institute has associated with other think-tanks like the American Enterprise Institute, The Heritage Foundation, The Fraser Institute, and the Cato Institute.

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hey guys, just pretend hard enough and we're better off than all those people who live longer than us while spending less money, ok?

Blindy fucked around with this message on 06-23-2009 at 09:04 AM.

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Steven Steve got a whole lot of nerve:
Haha if you factor out lifestyle choices

Jesus Christ

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let's just factor out heart attacks and lung cancer