Report

The Case for Public Plan Choice in National Health Reform

Alex Lawson — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 17:23:40 -0500

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A health care system that contains costs and drives value must include a good public plan if the broad goals of reform—universal insurance and improved value—are to be achieved. Private insurance and public insurance have distinct strengths and weaknesses, and thus should be encouraged to compete side by side to attract enrollees on a level playing field that rewards plans that deliver better value and health to their enrollees. Public insurance has a better track record at reining in costs, while preserving access; it has pioneered key quality and payment innovations that have often set the standard for private plans; it is essential to set a standard against which private plans must compete to drive value and can be a source of stability for people. Private plans are a source of new benefit options, and continuing pressure for innovation in benefit design and care management strategies.

According to opinion polling, most Americans want public and private insurance competing side by side so that they can choose the best option for themselves and their families. Both should have a chance to prove their strengths and improve their weaknesses in a competitive partnership.

Go to the dedicated web page for the report here»
Listen to an MP3 of the Press Conference releasing the report here»

Health Care For America

Jacob S. Hacker — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 11:22:20 -0500

America's $2.2-trillion-a-year medical complex is enormously wasteful, ill-targeted, inefficient, and unfair. The best medical care is extremely good, but the Rube Goldberg system through which that care is financed is extremely bad—and falling apart. One out of three non-elderly Americans spend some time without health insurance every two years, and the majority of those remain uninsured for more than nine months. Meanwhile, runaway health costs have become an increasingly grave threat, not just to the security of family finances, but also to corporate America's bottom line. The United States spends much more as a share of its economy on health care than any other nation, and yet all this spending has failed to buy Americans the one thing that health insurance is supposed to provide: health security.

Democracy Corp/CAF Survey on the House Republican Budget

Terrance Heath — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 14:45:01 -0400

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Paul Ryan To Seniors: "Drop Dead"

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A new Democracy Corps/Campaign for America's Future survey on House Republican budget proposal shows Americans are skeptical of Republicans in Congress and the Tea Party movement, and cautious about the deficit reduction plan.

Our data shows that proposals to dismantle Medicare in the 2012 House Republican budget could sink the political futures of those who for it. When the budget is described, using the language of its chief author, support collapses to 36 percent. The proposed cuts to Medicare raise concerns for nearly two-thirds of respondents.

Here are the key findings from the survey:

Just 38 percent of voters say they approve of House Republicans. After the tumultuous debate over the 2011 budget and the threatened government shutdown, a shocking 55 percent disapprove.
Less than half of the public supports the House Republican budget — described simply as a “budget for the next 10 years that they say will cut 6.2 trillion dollars from the federal budget.”
When the budget is described using Ryan's own language, support drops to 36 percent. A large majority of 56 percent oppose it, 42 percent strongly. Among seniors, support drops to just 32 percent, with 57 percent opposed. Independent support drops to 43 percent.
Cuts to Medicare raise concerns for nearly two-thirds of respondents; raising serious doubts for 66 percent, and very serious doubts for 40 percent.

Democracy Corps/CAF Poll On Jobs And The Economy

Isaiah J. Poole — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 10:32:33 -0500

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News release

Blogs and commentary

View this presentation on the OurFuture.org Slideshare page.

The voters have a clear and dramatic message for the new Republicans in the Congress and the president on the eve of his State of the Union Address: focus on jobs and the economy and show how America is going to be economically successful again.

This is not a nuanced poll. If Democrats did not get the message in 2010, voters are ready to send a message again, according to the first Democracy Corps-Campaign for America’s Future survey of 2011. The media pundits and Washington conventional wisdom says deficit reduction and cutting government spending are the top priorities for the nation, and the Republican Congress is starting with voting to repeal health care and putting Social Security cuts on the table for the first time. They could not have it more wrong.

This survey was conducted after the January 8 Tucson shooting but mostly before the president’s memorial address January 12.

Here are key findings from the poll:

When asked to select what they believed were the two most important economic problems facing the country right now, 41 percent said “high unemployment” and 33 percent said “outsourcing of jobs,” the latter capturing the deep worry that America and American corporations are not able or willing to create American jobs. Another 18 percent focused on wages not keeping up with the cost of living. Just 25 percent chose “the budget deficit is big and growing” as one of the top two problems.
Just 17 percent think the priority of the new Congress should be repealing health care. What respondents did say the Congress should prioritize over the next two years is economic recovery and new jobs (46 percent), protecting Social Security and Medicare (34 percent) and "making sure that our children receive an education for these times (27 percent).
While deficit reduction is very important, voters want to see a growth strategy. When respondents were offered a choice between brave deficit reduction and a jobs plan to reduce the deficit and achieve growth, they rallied to the later, 58 to 35 percent, with 42 percent strongly embracing growth over austerity. On a scale of zero (cool) to 100 (warm), respondents registered support for a plan to invest in new industries and rebuild the country over the next five years (57 warm and 16 cool). They also supported, but not as strongly, a plan to dramatically reduce the deficit over the next five years (52 warm and 20 cool).
Elected officials have no mandate to cut Social Security—and the voters have no appetite for it: 56 percent of respondents oppose the recommendation of the White House bipartisan deficit commission to raise the retirement age to 69 by 2075.
On the surface, 56 percent of respondents support a deficit commission goal of $4 trillion in deficit reduction by 2020. But a nearly identical bloc (54 percent) hate the plan itself. When they hear the details of the plan, without any rhetoric, they turn dramatically against it.
A sizeable majority, 52 to 43 percent, oppose the planned $100 billion dollars in budget cuts House Republicans have proposed for this year that would reduce spending on education, student loans, energy and the environment. Also, by a two-to-one margin, voters disapprove of Republican positions that add to the deficit (such as the repeal of health care reform and making permanent tax cuts for the wealthy).

The Politics Ahead

After the Republicans landslide win in 2010, the country has quickly moved to a position of party parity in vote preference, image and identification. About equal numbers identify with the Democrats and Republicans; the two national and congressional parties are equally unpopular. In addition, President Obama's standing is stronger since the election. His approval rating is up to 47 percent, but more important, strong disapproval has plummeted. This is a major change in mood and climate for the period ahead.

However, the president has further to go to have a clear lead and congressional Democrats have further to go if they are to rebuild their majorities. The Democratic majorities of 2006 and 2008 were produced by a new broad progressive base and by gains among key swing groups. To regain these majorities for 2012 Democrats will have to make significant additional gains with young voters and unmarried women. Democrats also need to do better with union households.

The difficulty that Democrats are having with white non-college and blue-collar voters is no doubt closely linked to the economy and the job climate. If Democrats are to reach these voters, they have to understand the scale of the problems people are facing and how hungry they are for Democrats to show how they are going to get the country back to growth and creating American jobs.

Economists agree that the unemployment rate will exceed 9 percent for the next several months and will most likely still exceed 8 percent during the 2012 election. There is no more important fact. In this survey, 17 percent report being unemployed in the past year; 41 percent when counting themselves or someone in their immediate family—one half of white non-college men.

President Obama and the Democratic Party have to start over in communicating their vision of the economy. The country embraces long-term plans for investment to create jobs and favors growth as the best route to deficit reduction, strongly favoring investment over austerity.

Federal Health Reform Provides Critical Long-Term Help to States

Isaiah J. Poole — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 11:41:10 -0500

Residents and governments of the 50 states and the District of Columbia will receive $849 billion in new federal funding for health coverage over the next decade under proposed federal health reform legislation.

This surge of new federal support includes $460 billion to help families purchase private health insurance coverage and $389 billion for state Medicaid programs. In return, states will be required to provide a modest match for the new federal dollars. Experts estimate the state match will be 3.1 percent of the new federal funds, a fraction of the customary rate.

Separately, under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and the pending jobs bill, the federal government is financing an immediate and substantial reduction in state Medicaid spending. Experts estimate the combined impact of enacting comprehensive reform, passing the pending jobs bill and completing implementation of the Recovery Act would be a net reduction in state Medicaid spending of $85 billion over the 2009 to 2019 period.

Passage of comprehensive health reform, as well as enactment of immediate relief through higher federal FMAP rates, would provide an enormous financial boost to state governments. These actions will relieve states of significant budgetary pressures while addressing the rising health care needs of American families.

Who Benefits from the Proposed Amendment to the Senate Excise Tax on Employer Health Premiums?

Isaiah J. Poole — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 10:15:40 -0500

The Senate health reform bill passed on December 24, 2009, contained an excise tax on high-cost employer health insurance plans; in mid-January 2010 the White House and union leaders negotiated a proposed amendment to the Senate excise tax provision. Several recent studies have evaluated the effectiveness of the tax as a revenue source and cost-containment measure. This report focuses on how the impact of the tax as passed by the Senate and the proposed amendment would differ for union members and workers not covered by a collective bargaining agreement.

While the potential effect on union plans is significant, union members are a relatively small fraction of the total population that would ultimately be affected by the tax, under either the Senate bill (December 2009) or the proposed amendment (January 2010). Key findings:

* Our analysis shows that workers in union firms would be less likely than those in non-union firms to be affected by the tax in the initial years. Workers in union firms would be more likely to be affected compared to their non-union counterparts in the later years, beginning in 2019 under the Senate-passed bill and in 2024 under the proposed amendment.
* The vast majority of employees affected by the excise tax are not covered by a union contract. This is true for both the Senate bill and the proposed amendment. Because many more workers are in non-union plans, fully 80 percent of the workers whose plans would be subject to the excise tax in 2019 under the Senate bill are not covered by collective bargaining agreements. Under the proposed amendment, the amount is slightly higher at 83 percent.
• We project that excise tax revenues will be reduced $41 billion under the White House-union leaders’ amendment. Of that, 71 percent would accrue to employees who are not covered by a union contract.

How not to think about cost control of American health care

Alex Lawson — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 11:20:32 -0500

Featured Resource

• Theodore Marmor: "How not to think about cost control of American health care" (PDF)

Additional Resources

• Jacob Hacker: "Public Plan Choice In Congressional Health Plans: The Good, The Not-So-Good, And The Ugly" (PDF)

• Jacob Hacker: "Healthy Competition: How to Structure Public Health Insurance Plan Choice to Ensure Risk-Sharing, Cost Control, and Quality Improvement" (PDF)

• Jacob Hacker: "The Case For Public Plan Choice in National Health Reform: Key to Cost Control and Quality Coverage" (PDF)

• Jacob Hacker: "Health Care for America" report and the Lewin Group cost analysis

• Timothy S. Jost and Joseph White: "Cutting Health Care Spending: What is the Cost of an Excise Tax that Keeps People from Going to the Doctor?" (PDF)

• Cutting Health Care Spending: Two Page Summary (PDF)

• Tim Jost: "Private Health Insurance Reform: Good, but – Without Public Insurance Option – Not Good Enough" (PDF)

• Tim Jost: "Public Plan or Cooperative: Does it Make a Difference?" (PDF)

• Tim Jost: "Local Cooperatives Will Not Work for Rural America" (PDF)

• Letter from 60 members of Congress to Secretary Sebelius demanding a strong public health insurance plan

• Institute for America's Future Public Health Insurance Resource Page

• Fight the lies with our Health Reform Fact Check here

• Diane Archer: Massachusetts Health Reform: Near Universal Coverage, But No Cost Controls or Guarantee of Quality, Affordable Health Care for All (PDF)

• The Path to a High Performance U.S. Health System: A 2020 Vision and the Policies to Pave the Way

Download The Full Report Here

The New York Times set out on Sunday, November 15, 2009 to evaluate on its editorial page proposals to address what they described as the worrisome and “relentless rise in health care costs and health insurance premiums.” Their review of ten cost control approaches was largely a mix of wishful thinking, naïve optimism, and a misguided but well-intentioned embrace of faddish ideas. In an April issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine, my colleagues Joe White of Case Western University and Jonathan Oberlander of the University of North Carolina and I argued against the faddish embrace of managed competition, preventive medicine, electronic medical records, and research on comparative effectiveness on the grounds that there was no empirical support for their roles as cost savers. Here I want to concentrate on one recommendation the Times (and their economic columnist David Leonhardt) support: the proposal to tax expensive, so-called Cadillac health insurance plans.

The Times endorses the Senate Finance proposal for an “excise tax on health insurance plans that cost more than $8000 for an individual or $21,000 for a family,” on two grounds. They first claim that such a tax would prompt insurers to design plans less than the threshold amounts. This, even if done to avoid the threshold, in itself has no necessary effect on total costs. Secondly, the Times makes the conventional micro- economic argument that having the insured pay more out of pocket would make them more cost-conscious consumers of medical care. In their words, “enrollees would have to pay more money for many services out of their own pocket, and that would encourage them to think twice about whether an expensive or redundant test was worth it.”

It is the claim about patient cost-sharing that is crucial and the astonishing feature of this line of argument is how odd it is and how weak is the evidence used to support it. The assumption from which this proceeds is that we should be critical—even contemptuous---of the wish for first-dollar, extensive health insurance. Why else use the slogan, Cadillac coverage, when the proper description is broad coverage of health risks with no deductibles or co-insurance to speak of? One would have hoped that those journalists supporting reform---and cost containment---would have noted that our Canadian neighbors have precisely that coverage for hospital and physician services and spend roughly 40 percent less per capita while using more physician visits and bed days than do American patients. (Note too that the US and Canada had identical spending in 1971, when Canadian national health insurance began in full, another indicator that enacting broad coverage cannot explain our cost differences.) Nor, incidentally, do any other of our trading partners rely on significant patient cost-sharing as a major cost control instrument. Where, then, does this confident support of a faddish idea come from? (fn.Their research includes the older book, Patient Cost Sharing: Snare or Delusion, 1981) and 7 review articles from the Center last decade.

The short answer is economic theology, not social science evidence. The standard teaching in American economic courses not only embraces market allocation of goods and services generally, but regularly extends the scope of goods and services that should be allocated by the willingness and ability to pay. Since the fall of Communism, few challenge the basic claim that for most ordinary goods and services, market allocation works better than its competitors. But there is no reason to believe this applies to most medical care. Not only do we go to physicians to find out what to make of our health circumstances, but we rely on them overwhelmingly for guidance about what to do. The asymmetry of the bases of judgment is overpowering, even when the Internet offers all manner of ambiguous information about our health and its care. The only tolerable basis for using patient cost-sharing as an allocational tool would be if citizens spending their own money can choose wisely, separating the useful from the useless or harmful medical intervention. Does the evidence support this assumption?

The short answer is no, but there is much to dispute about the major empirical basis in American reform writing for the support of patient cost-sharing. Though neither the Times editorial board nor Leonhardt invoke the Rand Health Insurance work of the 1970s, that social experiment has provided the seeming authority to the argument that requiring patients to pay for some of their health care does not harm their health and is therefore worth requiring. In fact, the experiment---on which I worked briefly in the summer of 1973—does not support that claim. For those who experimentally paid a co-insurance rate of 25 percent, there was a reduced rate of using medical care compared to those with first-dollar coverage. Having people pay to get medical care does reduce use; that much is established by much research. But the crucial other finding was that services cost sharing dissuaded was not useless and the care sought useful. Rather, cost-sharing blocked both useful and wasteful care in roughly equal proportions. Moreover, the fact that in a three-year experiment, large differences in health outcomes did not show up provides little grounds for thinking nothing is lost when care is rationed by the ability and willingness to pay.

The extensive research on the distributive consequences of patient cost-sharing provides further grounds questioning the conclusion that bearing costs when ill or anxious is a worthy policy. For Health Services Research in the Work over many years at the University of British Columbia—by Professors Robert Evans, Morris Barer, and Greg Stoddard—shows that lower income citizens and families disproportionately ration their care more than their higher income counterparts. Since the care postponed has not been shown to be wise, the distributive consequences alone support the attack on the Cadillac coverage argument.

So much then for the empirical findings within the health economics field in the United States. Elsewhere, there is largely contempt for the argument on which the Cadillac excise tax is based. In the United Kingdom, care is free at the point of service and, for the first 50 years of the National Health Service, it was the model instance of aggressive cost control through overall budgeting. One does not have to celebrate what the NHS has done to notice that it has relied on direct budget limits to control outlays. Equally, Canadian provinces have paid lower prices for the services they fund and used the same budget limits to enforce cost control goals. The central lesson, as we argued earlier, of international experience is that effective, defensible cost control requires strong government leadership. This experience reflects the obvious, but often forgotten axiom that a dollar of expenditure for medical care is necessarily a dollar of income for the medical care industry. That means cost control must be costly to someone and in turn will always be controversial. This is true whether the foregone expenditures are administrative, wasteful, useful or useless.

It is this hard truth that has led so many to try to find appealing seemingly costless means of controlling inflation in American medicine. But if the United States is to control its costs, it will have to learn from those that have done so in the last half century. That will mean price restraints, spending targets, and insurance regulation. Painless savings are an illusion and an excise tax on Cadillac coverage is one example of precisely such an illusion.

Download The Full Report Here

Cutting Health Care Spending: What is the Cost of an Excise Tax that Keeps People from Going to the Doctor?

Alex Lawson — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 10:25:03 -0500

Featured Resource

• Timothy S. Jost and Joseph White: "Cutting Health Care Spending: What is the Cost of an Excise Tax that Keeps People from Going to the Doctor?" (PDF)

• Cutting Health Care Spending: Two Page Summary (PDF)

Additional Resources

• Tim Jost: "Private Health Insurance Reform: Good, but – Without Public Insurance Option – Not Good Enough" (PDF)

• Tim Jost: "Public Plan or Cooperative: Does it Make a Difference?" (PDF)

• Tim Jost: "Local Cooperatives Will Not Work for Rural America" (PDF)

• Jacob Hacker: "Public Plan Choice In Congressional Health Plans: The Good, The Not-So-Good, And The Ugly" (PDF)

• Jacob Hacker: "Healthy Competition: How to Structure Public Health Insurance Plan Choice to Ensure Risk-Sharing, Cost Control, and Quality Improvement" (PDF)

• Jacob Hacker: "The Case For Public Plan Choice in National Health Reform: Key to Cost Control and Quality Coverage" (PDF)

• Jacob Hacker: "Health Care for America" report and the Lewin Group cost analysis

• Letter from 60 members of Congress to Secretary Sebelius demanding a strong public health insurance plan

• Institute for America's Future Public Health Insurance Resource Page

• Fight the lies with our Health Reform Fact Check here

• Diane Archer: Massachusetts Health Reform: Near Universal Coverage, But No Cost Controls or Guarantee of Quality, Affordable Health Care for All (PDF)

• The Path to a High Performance U.S. Health System: A 2020 Vision and the Policies to Pave the Way

Download The Full Report Here

The “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” legislation passed by the Senate includes a steep excise tax on high-cost, so-called “Cadillac” insurance plans. Supporters of the tax believe it will discourage “excessive” insurance and “bend the cost curve.” The evidence suggests that it will mostly discourage adequate insurance for particularly risky groups, and “bend the curve” mainly by threatening quality of care for sicker people.

Excise Tax Likely to Lead to Reduced Benefits, Higher Cost Sharing and/or Less Care

Advocates for the tax present it as a way to reduce an unnecessary subsidy for “lush” benefits. Yet both survey data and expert testimony report that more of the variation in costs of plans is due to the health status, size of firm and location of the members than to “lush” benefits. To avoid the tax, plans will cut benefits and increase cost sharing, which is the major tool insurers have to reduce costs.

• A recent study in Health Affairs by the nation’s leading experts on employer-provided insurance could only explain 6 percent of the variation in plan costs by the extent of benefits and form of coverage (e.g. HMO, PPO, etc.).

• All government and private-sector analysts agree that the majority of affected firms will avoid the tax by offering plans that cover fewer services and increase patient out-of-pocket costs.

Higher Out-of-Pocket Costs Caused by Reduced Insurance are Dangerous

Advocates for the tax presume that reducing “excessive” insurance will only reduce waste and not affect the quality of care for those enrollees. Insurers have shown little ability to reduce their packages save by increasing cost-sharing. Advocates cite the Rand Health Insurance Experiment (HIE) to argue increased cost-sharing will do little harm. Yet both the HIE and subsequent studies found that:

• People who consume less care due to cost-sharing normally use less care that experts consider necessary to the same extent that they reduce care that experts consider superfluous.

• People who are most likely not to seek care because of cost sharing and most likely to need care because of a chronic condition, may well suffer negative health effects. If the workers subject to the excise tax are in unusually unhealthy groups, as will often be the case, the tax will target higher cost sharing on precisely the wrong groups of people.

• In the HIE, once a person entered the medical care system, cost sharing had little effect on consumption of care. “Cost sharing ‘worked’ almost entirely by reducing the number of medical care episodes for which treatment was sought.” The study did not find health care effects for healthier and wealthier people, but it also was fairly short and enrollees disproportionately dropped out of the plans with higher cost sharing.

• Subsequent studies have found that reduced utilization of some services due to cost sharing was associated with increased use of other services later. Amitabh Chandra, Jonathan Gruber and Robin McKnight found that higher cost sharing for physician services and drugs were associated with greater rates of hospitalization among retired public employees in California. A Canadian study of prescription drug cost sharing found that “when cost sharing for prescription drugs increased, the demand for prescription drugs decreased and the demand for physician visits increased.”

Employers Lack the Power to Control Health Insurance Costs

The literature about the health insurance industry, and simple observation, show that employers treat health insurance like any other business expense, continually shop and bargain, changing their benefit packages and trying to contain costs.

• It requires heroic assumptions to conclude either that employers have not been caring “enough” about costs given the tax exclusion or that, even if they cared more, they could do much about it, just because the tax code changed.

• What employers lack is not interest in controlling costs. They lack the power to control costs. There is no other advanced industrial democracy in which isolated employers are expected to get good deals from powerful insurance and medical industries.

The Excise Tax Is Not “Tax Reform”

Advocates for the tax believe it is a step towards eliminating a tax preference that favors higher-income employees, and so will make the tax system fairer. This is highly questionable.

• Because health benefits are a larger share of income for lower-wage workers, the current tax exclusion is a larger share of income for them than for higher-wage workers.7 In this sense it is “progressive,” not “regressive.” Conventional wisdom has it wrong.

• Advocates for the tax assume employers would give all employees the same money in wages that they now receive in health benefits. Not only do surveyed employers say they do not plan to do so overall, but there is no evidence that an employer that dropped $12,000 in coverage would give the same $12,000 raise to a worker earning $35,000 as to one earning $70,000.

The Excise Tax Is Bad Health Policy – and There Is A Better Approach

Taxing people with “excessive” health benefits may sound attractive, but the excise tax will erode health benefits and drive up costs for people with merely adequate health benefits.

• If it were true that health plans with high costs meant that benefits were excessively generous, none of these criticisms would be so important. But if high costs are associated not with particularly generous benefits, but with greater need for care, then the excise tax could contradict the whole point of health insurance, and of health care reform.

• Advocates who believe some benefits are excessive should support a simple alternative: Define a maximum benefit package, and eliminate the exclusion for coverage that exceeds that standard. That would avoid all of the inequities of the excise tax approach.

Download The Full Report Here

Impact of the Insurer Fee and the Excise Tax on the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program

Isaiah J. Poole — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 13:46:57 -0500

The annual insurer fee and excise tax in the proposed Patent Protection and Affordable Health Care Act pending in the Senate would have a significant negative impact on the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program. The annual insurer fee would lead to increased premiums, and in order to avoid the excise tax, plans would be forced to reduce benefits.

Additionally, when considered in tandem, the annual insurer fee and the excise tax create a vicious cycle; the annual insurer fee would push premiums ever closer to, or over, the excise tax threshold which in turn would force carriers to reduce benefits at an even faster pace in order to avoid the excise tax.

This squeeze play will be exacerbated by the fact that the PPACA indexes the excise tax thresholds to the annual Consumer Price Index for all Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increase plus one point. Because the CPI-U rises much more slowly than the medical costs that make up the vast majority of carriers’ costs, upward adjustments to the excise tax thresholds would not be sufficient to mitigate the rate of benefit cuts.

Need For Transparency And Accountability In The Health Insurance Marketplace

Alex Lawson — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 17:19:20 -0500

MEDIA ADVISORY:
MONDAY, DEC. 7, 2009
CONTACT: Toby Chaudhuri or Jennifer Ettinger at 202-955-5665

DELAURO, CONSUMERS UNION TO URGE SENATE TO REQUIRE HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANIES TO MAKE COST AND COVERAGE INFORMATION PUBLIC

Rep. DeLauro to Join Groups Representing Thousands of Doctors, Patients and Business Leaders to Urge Senators to Call For Private Insurance Transparency

WASHINGTON – As President Obama’s signature health care bill moves in the Senate, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., will join Institute for America’s Future health care project director Diane Archer, Georgetown University research professor Karen Pollitz and Consumers Union senior policy analyst Bill Vaughan to urge insurance companies to disclose information about the prices they charge and the care they cover that they are now keeping secret.

Participants on the call will share copies of letters signed by dozens of health care experts to Senate Finance Committee leaders, urging that this transparency be included in legislation to protect consumers and enable regulators to oversee and enforce rules included in the sweeping House bill (H.R. 3962) that passed last month.

HEALTH INSURANCE TRANSPARENCY

NEWS CONFERENCE CALL

DATE: Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2009

TIME: 12 p.m. ET

CALL-IN: 888-378-0342, code 6524755

PARTICIPANTS:

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn.

Diane Archer, health care project director, Institute for America’s Future

Karen Pollitz, research professor, Georgetown University Health Policy Institute

Bill Vaughan, senior policy analyst, Consumers Union

Copies of the letters can be found at the links below

Institute for America's Future and Health Experts
http://www.ourfuture.org/files/IAF_Transparency_Letter.pdf

Consumers Union
http://www.prescriptionforchange.org/2009/12/more_transparency_needed_in...

Health Access
http://www.ourfuture.org/files/Rukavina_letter.pdf

National Physicians Alliance
http://www.ourfuture.org/files/NPA_Transparancy_Letter.pdf