Why the health insurance industry has been for the new health care law all along
After supposedly opposing the president’s health care bill, which would force Americans to buy private insurance, and giving Americans over the past year the impression that the battle was that of a populist president vs. big business, the insurance industry is suddenly embracing the new law and wants to get as many Americans enrolled as possible!
According to a TIME Magazine article: America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the industry trade group, has agreed to sign on to a new, 50-state health care reform implementation effort, provisionally called Enroll America, which is being organized by Ron Pollack of the pro-reform group Families USA. “We are participating in it,” says AHIP spokesman Robert Zirkelbach. “The goal is to get everyone covered.”
The myth that insurance companies oppose legislation that would lay heavy fines on any citizen who doesn’t purchase their product was used by the mainstream media and the White House to make Americans believe that the victory of a few corporations somehow equated to victory for the people. While doing nothing to address the creation of new jobs so that the uninsured can sustainably afford the insurance they’re being forced to buy, the new law has assured the insurance industry an endless well of customers, backed by the US taxpayer if those customers are unable to pay.
Enroll America will focus on enticing the final 5% of Americans who will be eligible for health insurance under the new law but whom congressional budget scorers do not expect to enroll. On a state-by-state basis, the group will work to create an easy application process for benefits, including access to enrollment at doctors’ offices, pharmacies and government agencies that provide other benefits like food stamps.
Though the people behind Enroll America say they’re concerned that a small percentage of the population will defy the law, the IRS has been enlisted to help the government enforce the insurance mandate.
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earlier:
Legal loophole will exempt Congressional staffers from a law they wrote
The health care reform bill signed into law by President Barack Obama Tuesday requires members of Congress and their office staffs to buy insurance through the state-run exchanges it creates – but it may exempt staffers who work for congressional committees or for party leaders in the House and Senate.
Staffers and members on both sides of the aisle call it an “inequity” and an “outrage” – a loophole that exempts the staffers most involved in writing and passing the bill from one of its key requirements.
The bill requires “congressional staff” to buy insurance from the exchanges – with a stipend from the Office of Personnel Management But page 158 of the bill defines “congressional staff” narrowly, as “employees employed by the official office of a member of Congress, whether in the district office or in Washington.”
The Congressional Research Service believes a court could rule that the legislation "would exclude professional committee staff, joint committee staff, some shared staff, as well as potentially those staff employed by leadership offices.”
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