Skip to content

RNs: Healthcare Bill Cedes Too Much to Insurance Industry

RNs: Healthcare Bill Cedes Too Much to Insurance Industry

December 22, 2009 SVadmin Comments 1 comment

Nation’s Largest RN Organization Says Healthcare Bill Cedes Too Much to Insurance Industry

By National Nurses United

December 21, 2009

The 150,000 member National Nurses United, the nation’s largest union and professional organization of registered nurses in the U.S., today criticized the healthcare bill now advancing in the U.S. Senate saying it is deeply flawed and grants too much power to the giant insurers.

“It is tragic to see the promise from Washington this year for genuine, comprehensive reform ground down to a seriously flawed bill that could actually exacerbate the healthcare crisis and financial insecurity for American families, and that cedes far too much additional power to the tyranny of a callous insurance industry,” said NNU co-president Karen Higgins, RN.

NNU Co-president Deborah Burger, RN challenged arguments of legislation proponents that the bill should still be passed because of expanded coverage, new regulations on insurers, and the hope that it will be improved in the House-Senate conference committee or future years.

“Those wishful statements ignore the reality that much of the expanded coverage is based on forced purchase of private insurance without effective controls on industry pricing practices or real competition and gaping loopholes in the insurance reforms,” said Burger.

Further, said NNU Co-president Jean Ross, RN, “the bill seems more likely to be eroded, not improved, in future years due to the unchecked influence of the healthcare industry lobbyists and the lessons of this year in which all the compromises have been made to the right.”

“Sadly, we have ended up with legislation that fails to meet the test of true healthcare reform, guaranteeing high quality, cost effective care for all Americans, and instead are further locking into place a system that entrenches the chokehold of the profit-making insurance giants on our health. If this bill passes, the industry will become more powerful and could be beyond the reach of reform for generations,” Higgins said.

NNU cited ten significant problems in the legislation, noting many of the same flaws also exist in the House version and are likely to remain in the bill that emerges from the House-Senate reconciliation process:

  1. The individual mandate forcing all those without coverage to buy private insurance, with insufficient cost controls on skyrocketing premiums and other insurance costs.
  2. No challenge to insurance company monopolies, especially in the top 94 metropolitan areas where one or two companies dominate, severely limiting choice and competition.
  3. An affordability mirage. Congressional Budget Office estimates say a family of four with a household income of $54,000 would be expected to pay 17 percent of their income, $9,000, on healthcare exposing too many families to grave financial risk.
  4. The excise tax on comprehensive insurance plans which will encourage employers to reduce benefits, shift more costs to employees, promote proliferation of high-deductible plans, and lead to more self-rationing of care and medical bankruptcies, especially as more plans are subject to the tax every year due to the lack of adequate price controls. A Towers-Perrin survey in September found 30 percent of employers said they would reduce employment if their health costs go up, 86 percent said they’d pass the higher costs to their employees.
  5. Major loopholes in the insurance reforms that promise bans on exclusion for pre-existing conditions, and no cancellations for sickness. The loopholes include:
    • Provisions permitting insurers and companies to more than double charges to employees who fail “wellness” programs because they have diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol readings, or other medical conditions.
    • Insurers are permitted to sell policies “across state lines”, exempting patient protections passed in other states. Insurers will thus set up in the least regulated states in a race to the bottom threatening public protections won by consumers in various states.
    • Insurers can charge four times more based on age plus more for certain conditions, and continue to use marketing techniques to cherry-pick healthier, less costly enrollees.
    • Insurers may continue to rescind policies for “fraud or intentional misrepresentation” – the main pretext insurance companies now use to cancel coverage.
  6. Minimal oversight on insurance denials of care; a report by the California Nurses Association/NNOC in September found that six of California’s largest insurers have rejected more than one-fifth of all claims since 2002.
  7. Inadequate limits on drug prices, especially after Senate rejection of an amendment, to protect a White House deal with pharmaceutical giants, allowing pharmacies and wholesalers to import lower-cost drugs.
  8. New burdens for our public safety net. With a shortage of primary care physicians and a continuing fiscal crisis at the state and local level, public hospitals and clinics will be a dumping ground for those the private system doesn’t want.
  9. Reduced reproductive rights for women.
  10. No single standard of care. Our multi-tiered system remains with access to care still determined by ability to pay. Nothing changes in basic structure of the system; healthcare remains a privilege, not a right.

“Desperation to pass a bill, regardless of its flaws, has made the White House and Congress subject to the worst political extortion and new, crippling concessions every day,” Burger said.

“NNU and nurses will continue to work with the thousands of grassroots activists across the nation to campaign for the best reform, which would be to expand Medicare to cover everyone, the same type of system working more effectively in every other industrial country. The day of that reform will come,” said Ross.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Blog, Politics

Post navigation

PREVIOUS
Kill the Senate Health Care Bill
NEXT
Obama Says He Never Campaigned for the Public Option

Join Our Mailing List

One thought on “RNs: Healthcare Bill Cedes Too Much to Insurance Industry”

  1. depelton says:
    December 23, 2009 at 5:44 am

    The biggest problem is that the legislation passed by the Senate forces Americans, under penalty of law, to make a decision about an expenditure of their own funds that they may not feel is in their interest. The carrot of a publicly financed option has been eliminated, and thus tens of millions of Americans are left with the stick of an expensive insurance obligation that they may not be able to afford. In criticizing the Massachusetts law, which is close to the Senate bill in conception, Obama said on a campaign stop in Cleveland in February 2008, “We still don’t know how Sen. Clinton intends to enforce a mandate, and if we don’t know the level of subsidies that she’s going to provide, then you can have a situation, which we are seeing right now in the state of Massachusetts, where people are being fined for not having purchased health care but choose to accept the fine because they still can’t afford it [insurance], even with subsidies.”

    From Demonizing Dean Won’t Absolve This Health Care Sham, by Robert Scheer.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.

CLICK IMAGE BELOW FOR MORE INFORMATION

DONATE TO THE FOOD BANK OF NEVADA COUNTY

(CLICK IMAGE)

DONATE TO NEVADA COUNTY RELIEF FUND (click image below)

Subscribe to Sierra Voices Journal

Jack Kornfield: A Steady Heart in Time of Corona Virus (Part I)

Erika Lewis, Shaye Cohn, Craig Flory – Got A Mind To Ramble

“Everlasting Arms”

Tara Brach: A Steady Heart in Time of Corona Virus (Part II)

Recent Posts

  • Where to get abortion pills and how to use them
  • In Ukraine, Diplomacy Has Been Ruled Out
  • Why Am I Obsessed With Ukraine?
  • Is “Ukraine Losing Badly” ?
  • Bill Clinton Makes a Pathetic Attempt to Retroactively Justify His Decision to Expand NATO

Recent Comments

  • Putin in Media Myth and Reality: Which is Which? on Ukraine War: A Bonanza for the Arms Industry
  • SVadmin on Countdown to World War III?
  • Pratima Basu on Scenes From Our Weekend at Lake Tahoe
  • IN PRAISE OF WARRIORS, NOT WAR on Celebrated to Death: Memorial Day Is Killing Us
  • SVadmin on How Suzanne Simard changed our relationship to trees

Archives

  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • November 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • December 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • January 2014
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009

Categories

  • Abortion
  • Afghanistan
  • Aging
  • American Empire
  • Anti-Depressant
  • Arms Sales
  • Articles
  • Atlas Obscura
  • Authoritarianism
  • Black Lives
  • Black Lives Matter
  • Blog
  • Buddhism
  • Budget
  • Buskers
  • Capitalism
  • Carbon Offsets
  • Cartoon
  • China
  • Climate Change
  • Compassion
  • Constitution
  • Corona Virus
  • Corruption
  • Cosmology
  • Coup
  • COVID-19
  • Democracy
  • Depression
  • Disenfranchisement
  • Drought
  • Economics
  • Education
  • Election Fraud
  • Empire
  • Environment
  • Extinction
  • Farming
  • Fascism
  • Filibuster
  • Fire!
  • Food Insecurity
  • Foreign Policy
  • Forest Ecology
  • Forest Management
  • Fracking
  • Gardening
  • Gender
  • GOP
  • Great Movies
  • Groundwater
  • Halloween
  • Health Care
  • High Country News
  • History
  • Humor
  • Hunger
  • Idaho-Maryland Mine
  • Ignorance
  • Immigration
  • Indigenous Peoples' Day
  • Insects
  • Israel
  • Labor
  • Lobbying
  • Local
  • Lunar Influence
  • Marijuana
  • Masks
  • Medical Care
  • Men
  • Men's Issues
  • Mental Health
  • Middle Class
  • Military Industrial Complex
  • Mining
  • MMT
  • Modern Monetary Theory
  • Moral Obligations
  • Music
  • Native Americans
  • NATO
  • Neoliberalism
  • New Cold War
  • Nuclear War
  • Nutrition
  • Oligarchy
  • Palestine
  • Pandemic
  • Parenting
  • Peace
  • Pharmaceuticals
  • Physics
  • Poetry
  • Police
  • Politics
  • Populism
  • Press
  • Race
  • Religion
  • Republican Derangement
  • Reviews
  • Revolution
  • Right-wing terrorism
  • Rights of Nature
  • Rise Gold
  • Rivers
  • Romance
  • Russia
  • Russiagate
  • Science
  • Slavery
  • Sleep
  • Smoke Inhalation
  • Student Debt
  • Summer
  • Technology
  • The Hartmann Report
  • Trump Virus
  • Tuba Skinny
  • Tyranny
  • Ukraine
  • Uncategorized
  • Unipolar vs. Multipolar
  • Vaccine Refusal
  • Vaccine Safety
  • Voting
  • War
  • War on Government
  • Water
  • Watersheds
  • Wells
  • Wildfires
  • Winter
  • Women's Issues
  • Work
  • Yemen

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org
© 2022   All Rights Reserved.