Health Care Act Abandons Previous Gains

LOWRY SIGNS HEALTH REFORM LAW, A MAJOR VICTORY FOR AWB MEMBERS, exulted the banner headline in the May 12 newsletter of the Association of Washington Business.

Crowed the act’s chief architect, State Rep. Phil Dyer, R-Issaquah, in a Spokesman-Review article published at about that same time, “We have found health care reform that works.”

Yeah, but for whom?

For insurance companies, say professional care givers, consumer activists, and advocates for the poor.

“Poor people in general are going to lose from this,” Morton Alexander, coordinator in Spokane for the Fair Budget Action Campaign said in an S-R story. “And poor people more and more include working people.”

Some call the reform rewrite a “bill of rights.” For the insurance industry.

“It basically gives the key to the city to the insurance companies,” lamented Peter McGough, president of the Washington State Medical Association, composed of doctors.

Insurance industry lobbyists and Republican standard bearers couldn’t resist gloating over the collusion that took place between them behind closed doors.

House Majority Caucus Chairman Todd Mielke, R-Spokane, the principal instigator in this process, an inexperienced 30-year-old, admitted he didn’t know much about health insurance. So the novice “went to the experts” and got insurance companies to help rewrite the law and gut reform.

In short, he asked to be used, plotted to bypass the democratic system of representative government, sold out citizens to further his own ambitions. And now expects to be rewarded.

Talk about arrogance.

Years of struggle and debate, planning and effort to secure health care for all have just been trashed by right wing zealots in the name of free enterprise.

Hundreds of thousands of the nearly three-quarter million uninsured in this state will continue to go bare.

The costs for those who have no coverage will continue to be shifted to those of us who do.

And insurance companies will continue to exploit the chaos, manipulate coverages, and raise premiums to reap obscene profits off suffering and pain.

AWB boasts of its leading role in “retaining insurance reforms” and making health care “more affordable.” Both of which are half truths.

On the plus side, the new law preserves portability, guaranteed renewal, and coverage regardless of pre-existing conditions. But it uncaps premium costs and reinstates rate-class warfare.

It expands “access” to the statesubsidized Basic Health Plan for the poor.

But for the poor, accessibility is one thing. Actual care is entirely another. Fewer than half of those to whom such coverage already is “accessible” do in fact avail themselves of it.

Similarly, insurers who sell plans to individuals and to employers of under 50 workers must offer insurance equal to the Basic Health Plan - cut-rate coverage.

Big deal. A barebones option has existed for years. And businesses who don’t truly value employees just ignore it.

They pass their responsibilities and shift those costs for their workers onto the rest of us. And they will continue to do so.

Under the old act, which provided a level playing field for all employers - NO MORE EXCUSES, EVERYONE PAYS fast-food operators and other service outlets would have been forced to start picking up their own tab.

But the most grievous insult to humanity in the new law is repeal of community rating. To prevent insurers from charging some consumers so much they can’t buy coverage, the old act required underwriters to pool all health risks in a given population and come up with one rate to fit all.

The new law doesn’t.

It says, in effect, insurers can’t discriminate against gays even though their sexual preference puts them at extra high risk for costly AIDs treatment.

Insurers can’t discriminate against Afro-Americans for a high incidence of coronary disease and diabetes.

But they can discriminate against people for being old.

(Coming: Legalized age discrimination in health care insurance. Is it fair? Moral? Constitutional?)

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