It's become more language arts lessons than reality, advertising scams disguised as "reporting" or as legitimate opinion pieces, expressing a writer's opinions based on facts, and it's bad for consumers, because it substitutes political campaigning for informing so that consumers can make educated decisions. And so we consider Andy Slavitt's recent writing.
March 5, 2018, USA TODAY, Andy Slavitt went on a rant titling his opinion article, "Junk insurance plan proves Trump doesn't care about your health." More than a US health insurance story, Slavitt's opinion is a language arts story. Slavitt uses the US health industrial complex as an image, the vehicle he's chosen to illustrate his main point--Trump doesn't care about you.
But the choice of vehicle, short-term health insurance plans is a bad one, requiring Slavitt to resort to a largely false narrative about short-term health insurance in order to support his opinion that other Presidents, specifically Obama and his Obamacare DID care about your health.
Slavitt asserts that the planned availability of short-term health insurance policies shows a President doesn't care. Whoops, that can't be a valid way to provide an image of the assertion of an uncaring President Trump unless we put President Obama beside President Trump.
After all, as I noted on February, 26, 2018 in response to a similar political smear on BloombergView, "Hating Trump and Dumber for it: BloombergView," we don't need Slavitt to lecture us about the short-term health insurance changes made by the Obama Administration that took place in 2016, SIX YEARS after Obamacare was enacted, because at the time the OBMAMA ADMINISTRATION, CMS, itself provided the Obama Administration's justification for their actions to us. Here is what the Obama Administration said:
"Some issuers are now offering short-term limited duration plans to consumers as their primary form of health coverage for periods that last nearly 12 months, allowing them to target ONLY THE HEALTHIEST CONSUMERS while avoiding consumer protections. As highlighted in recent press accounts, BY KEEPING THESE CONSUMERS OUT OF THE ACA single risk pool, such abuses of limited duration coverage increase costs for everyone else, and they could have a greater impact over time if allowed to become more widespread." [caps added for emphasis]
If you READ THEIR WORDS, CMS and the Obama Administration didn't give a crap about YOUR physical and economic health when they limited the availability of short-term health insurance plans from up to 364 days to under three months, instead, they worried that the MYTHICAL* single risk pool created by Obamacare, that allegedly used the money of young healthies so that insurers would take on people who they might actually have to cover claims for would not overcharge those who might actually use their health insurance.
Why would CMS worry about young healthies using short-term health insurance policies? Again, we need not imagine the reason for the Obama Administration's concern, Obama's Administration stated: "…BY KEEPING THESE CONSUMERS OUT OF THE ACA single risk pool, such abuses of limited duration coverage increase costs for everyone else, and they could have a greater impact over time if allowed to become more widespread." [caps added]
OK, so the Obama Administration wasn't worried about people's health, they were worried that the absence of THESE CONSUMERS, the young-healthies would raise everyone else's premiums, because after all, the Obama Administration's partner, the insurance companies, had made a DEAL with Obama, you give us everyone as a customer and we won't deny coverage to anyone, (laid out in the insurance lobby's pre-Obamacare 2008 document, "Health Plans Propose Guaranteed Coverage for Pre-Existing Conditions and Individual Coverage Mandate,” produced by AHIP.)
"Your health," had little to do with the changes to short-term health insurance plan availability made by the Obama Administration in 2016. As a matter of fact, these junk plans as Slavitt calls them simply capitalized on the federal government's embrace of insurance company practices that have for decades exploited consumers with plans with lower premiums created by either reducing coverage OR by narrowing networks, or both, which is what Obamacare legitimized with the force of federal law in Obamacare.
Again, we need not rely on Slavitt's story, instead we'll go back to the Obama Administration's own words in a report outlining anticipated continued increases in premiums charged to consumers. In 2015, FIVE YEARS after Obamacare, Obama's government reported:
"CBO and JCT anticipate that many plans will not be able to sustain such low provider payment rates or such narrow networks over the next few years, placing upward pressure on exchange premiums.” (CBO, Pub. 49973, page 17)."
OK, so Obamacare exchange premiums were kept low how? Ask Obama's Administration, NARROW NETWORKS and LOW PROVIDER PAYMENTS and even then, going along with their partner insurance companies, this approach was viewed, by the OBAMA Administration as unsustainable. Not such a revolution of progress considering it's exactly what insurance companies had done all along.
Did those diminishing coverages and narrow networks prevent premium increases? Of course not. AGAIN, go to the Obama Administration's 2016 comments about premium increases for private health insurance SIX years after Obamacare:
"Over the period from 2005 to 2014, premiums for employment-based insurance grew by 48 percent for single coverage and by 55 percent for family coverage. CBO and JCT expect them to grow at similar rates over the next decade," https://www.cbo.gov/publication/51130.
OK, got that? Obama's Administration expected that post ACA increases in insurance premiums for private health insurance would jump 48 percent from 2015 to 2024, JUST AS THEY HAD from 2005 to 2014. Does this impact the so-called exchange plans? Of course, because exchange plan prices are hinged to the second lowest cost health plan offered in a region.
Then there's Slavitt's "recommendations," including "addressing the high cost of prescription drugs." Are you kidding? Obamacare completely screwed up that one, ignoring real health insurance reform by partnering with insurance companies rather than governing them. How was big pharma as it's often called addressed? Crickets, nothing. Did Obamacare require insurance plans to provide coverage for prescriptions? No. Again, simply go to Obama's Obamacare healthcare.gov site and look up coverage of prescription drugs advising you to contact your insurance company.
Having told an imaginary story to illustrate his main point, the assertion that Trump doesn't care about you, Slavitt concludes with another manipulation: "Americans concerned about continued access to health care cannot be blamed for feeling their only choice is to vote them out."
Now, as English students we should be pretty clear on that bit of Slavitt's political campaigning: "If you care about health in America vote Democrat." Not only false, but using consumers as tools, hailing back to the unfortunate truth about Obamacare as revealed by one of its "architects," Jonathan Gruber who proudly bragged that "a lack of transparency" and "stupidity of the American voter" got Obamacare passed.
*MYTHICAL single risk pool: Single risk pool, meaning, that uniform standards are applied to applicants for health insurance, loosely employed by Obamacare's efforts to nationalize health insurance requirements across states NEVER existed and does not exist under Obamacare.
Just go to the law. First, while Obamacare prohibits charging increased premiums based on customary actuarial experiences of prior claim history, weight, illegal or legal prescription drug use, it does single out two groups of people for higher premiums, those who are older and those who use tobacco. Second, the price of health insurance plans in separate states is based on the second lowest priced silver plan in a region, making costs vary widely. The single risk pool idea is also sidestepped by Obamacare with the erosion of ERISA rights for employees permitting employers to require employees to have wellness interviews so that insurance companies can "better price" their consumer financial products.
