it’s time to get off your heiny and do so. NOW.
I’m working on our company’s health insurance renewal, making a spreadsheet of quotes from every insurer available in our company’s geographic area. I can’t get a rate from any of them that’s less than our renewal rate with HealthNet: an increase of 24.48%, and still our employees are going to have higher out-of-pocket costs when they see the doctor. One of the rates we were quoted, for an equivalent package, was a whopping 60% higher.
It’s been this way ever since I started here, but in the past 6-8 years the rate of increase year over year has really taken off. And I can’t see how anything can slow or reverse the rate of premium increases except a public option.
This isn’t just a matter of us getting slapped by the Invisible Hand. Insurance is regulated at the state level, and in order to protect their rates, insurance companies have colluded to divvy up the market so that companies like mine have a half dozen or fewer choices, and those choices run the gamut from bad to worse. There are no good options, and that’s neither a fluke nor an economic necessity. But we are better off than some states: in the Midwest, many states are dominated by a single insurer, like Blue Cross/Blue Shield, which commands over 90% of the market.
Republicans are supposed to love competition, so I don’t understand the fear and loathing that a public option elicits from them. (I do understand it, of course – follow the money – but I’ll take them at their word for the purpose of this discussion.) A public option is not the boogey man, it’s just one more choice for consumers.
The only substantive difference between the public option and its private counterparts will be that the public option will not have to spike your premium with your share of marketing costs, CEO salaries, shareholder dividends, corporate profits, and the cost of employing hundreds of underwriters and claims staff whose job it is to find some reason – any reason, legitimate or not – to deny your claim or cancel your policy when you unwisely become ill and begin to eat in to the profit margin.
If Dr. Dean says we have the votes in the Senate (and as the former DNC chair, he knows how to count), it’s time to get a public option bill out of both chambers and get this mofo DONE.
You can find your rep here and your senators here, and also find their email forms, phone numbers and snailmail addresses through those sites.
A phonecall is more effective than an email; the Capitol switchboard number (which gets you to any rep. or senator) is 202-243-3121. Please use it.
h/t to Athenae for the link, and math4barack‘s original post.
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