Sounding The Alarm

The focus of this blog, Health Insurance Issues With Dave, is, first and foremost, insurance, the way most Americans access and pay for health care.  There are three key players in this process: the medical providers, the insurance companies, and the government.  The medical provider section includes doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and everyone/everything else involved in the delivery of care.  The insurance companies serve both to organize the market and as a useful buffer between the providers and the patients.  And the government writes the rules, pays a huge portion of the bills through Medicare and Medicaid, and significantly impacts the pricing.  There is a natural push and pull in this process.  The American public benefits when all three sectors work towards a common good (Enlightened Self-Interest).  That isn’t easy and it depends on a determined focus and an honest effort.  To be clear, determined focus and honest efforts don’t guarantee success.  A lack of either determined focus or honest effort guarantee failure.

Deep In The Heart(less) Of Texas was posted on September 9, 2018.  This was the first blog dedicated to the Texas lawsuit, the attempt to have the courts declare the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) unconstitutional.  Today’s post will be the 14^th warning of the havoc this could cause.  Yes, I keep sounding the alarm.  There isn’t any good will, focus, or honest effort involved in the promotion of this lawsuit.  And it only got worse when Donald Trump decided to champion its cause.

The sudden elimination of Obamacare without a replacement would terminate health insurance for millions of Americans.  This is so important that I was happy to see an article in Sunday’s (5/24/2020) Plain Dealer on the issue.  “If Obamacare was overturned, what would it mean here?” was written by Sabrina Eaton.  Welcome to the conversation!

Please read her article.  There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that contradicts my 13 previous posts.  I will note that Ms. Eaton bothered to contact Senator Portman’s office for the story.  He predictably declined to comment on the court case, but his spokesman did note that premiums have gone up.  I would never contact Senator Portman’s office about a solution or improvement to our health care system for the same reason you wouldn’t bother to call my Rabbi for a ham recipe.  But she tried.

As previously noted, I was both surprised and pleased to see this coverage in the Plain Dealer.  Considering the potential impact on our area, I expected them to sound the alarm regularly.  Imagine my shock when I went to their website to link this article.  It took some effort to find it.  Ms. Eaton’s article was posted on Cleveland.com on May 8, 2020, over two weeks earlier!  I guess Greater Clevelanders are lucky that there was so little going on this Memorial Day weekend that her article finally made it to print.  And though I have readers across the country, I would never compare the reach of my little blog to the readership of the once formidable Plain Dealer or its disorganized website.  An issue that impacts nearly 20% of our nation’s economy, the lives of millions of Ohioans, and the financial stability of our hospitals deserves our attention.  In the old days we could count on our newspapers to bring us the information we needed.

Will the Texas lawsuit succeed?  Stranger things have happened.  I promise to keep you informed.  And to keep sounding the alarm.

DAVE

www.cunixinsurance.com

Picture – Thankfully Loud – David L Cunix

The Fear Before Now

Health insurance used to be hard to get and expensive.  It is no longer hard to get health insurance, but it certainly is expensive.  In that health insurance is the way most Americans access and pay for their health care, it was very important to make it easier for us to become insured.

Too many of us forget what it once was like to purchase insurance.  In ancient times, pre-2014, your agent would ask you questions about your health, occupation, driving record, and hobbies.  If you needed coverage for a spouse or children, we needed all of that information on each of them, too.  As you can imagine, there were plenty of adults with Diabetes (Type 1 or 2), cancers, and sports injuries that either prevented them from acquiring coverage or resulted in higher premiums.  Some policies waived (excluded) preexisting conditions.  Some policies accepted an individual and his/her preexisting conditions after extensive conversations with the underwriters and the insurer had collected all of the pertinent medical records.

Insurance companies hate preexisting conditions, the difference between a risk and a certainty.  Children were an agent’s biggest challenge.  Ask any agent.  We remember the children we fought to cover.  There were children, sometimes babies, with cystic fibrosis, heart conditions, and even adolescents with ADHD.  We fought and we fought and most of the time we succeeded at finding the families health insurance.

No one wants to be responsible for the payment of the costs associated with preexisting conditions.  Not even the government.  Today’s proof comes courtesy of The Military Times.  The Pentagon has confirmed a recently released memo that stated that any recruit who has been diagnosed as having had COVID-19 will be permanently disqualified.  Permanently.  We have no idea what costs may be incurred 5, 10, or even 20 years from now by those who survive the Coronavirus.

We used to worry about getting insurance once we contracting an illness or suffered an injury even if we had a complete recovery.  That fear was real.  Now, thanks to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), we no longer have that concern.  That could change if Donald Trump and 18 Republican governors have their way.

This blog has extensively covered the Texas lawsuit, the effort to declare Obamacare unconstitutional which would eliminate coverage for preexisting conditions and throw our entire system into disarray.  This past Wednesday was an important milepost, the last day for the Trump administration to disengage from the case as it heads to the Supreme Court.  Instead, President Trump said, “We want to terminate health care under Obamacare”.  What would happen if he is successful and Obamacare destroyed?  He has no idea.  What is his alternative, his replacement for our current system?  Trust him, it will be great.

Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) was interviewed by Chuck Todd on Meet The Press (5/20/2020).  The Senator expressed disappointment that Trump decided to stay a part of the lawsuit.  It was one thing for Senator Alexander and other Congressional Republicans to cast dozens of meaningless votes to dismantle Obamacare.  It is entirely different to actually be a part of an action that could succeed in harming millions of Americans.

It is amazing that Texas, with almost 25% uninsured, the highest in the country, wants to impose its success on the rest of us.

States suing to immediately end the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act:

            Texas                                 Alabama

            Arkansas                            Arizona

            Florida                               Georgia

            Indiana                              Kansas

            Louisiana                           Mississippi

            Missouri                            Nebraska

            North Dakota                    South Carolina

            South Dakota                     Tennessee

            Utah                                  West Virginia

These states were part of the lawsuit, but dropped off:

            Maine                                Wisconsin

States defending the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (initial filing):

            California                          Connecticut

            District of Columbia          Delaware

            Hawaii                               Illinois

            Kentucky                            Massachusetts

            Minnesota                         New Jersey

            New York                           North Carolina

            Oregon                              Rhode Island

            Vermont                            Virginia

            Washington

These states joined in the defense:

            Colorado                           Iowa

            Michigan                           Nevada

Data courtesy Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

There was fear before now, the fear that we would not be able to get health insurance for ourselves and our families due to a preexisting condition.  It was real.  The question, now in the middle of a pandemic, is whether that fear is about to return.

DAVE

www.cunixinsurance.com

Picture – The Other Side Of The Fence – David L Cunix