We Write Letters

After California's insurance regulator charged Blue Shield with illegally dropping health coverage for more than 200 of its customers [1], Institute for America's Future's own Diane Archer wrote a letter to the LA Times [2], published today, explaining how we can prevent anyone from going without health insurance:

There's a simple solution to the private health insurance crisis too many insured people across the country are facing: Offer a public insurance option like the public Medicare program to employers and to people unable to secure good, affordable coverage from private insurers or who no longer trust their private insurer to guarantee them affordable health security. At the same time, require private insurers to be accountable to their policyholders.

Private insurers need to make public their protocols for denying and delaying care and to guarantee continuous coverage to their policyholders without medical underwriting.

Recent polling suggests that the overwhelming majority of the public supports these types of reforms. And these are the kinds of protections every leading Democratic presidential candidate is proposing. The health insurance marketplace is clearly not working for working families.

To suggest, as the leading Republican candidates do, that a tax credit alone will guarantee us good, affordable healthcare is to ignore the scope of the problem.